American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier
Joyce Kilmer | |
|---|---|
Kilmer's River University yearbook photograph, c. 1908 | |
| Born | Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-12-06)December 6, 1886 New Town, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | July 30, 1918(1918-07-30) (aged 31) near Seringes-et-Nesles, Marne, France |
| Cause of death | Killed in action |
| Occupation | Poet, journalist, editor, lecturer, soldier |
| Alma mater | Columbia University (A.B. 1908) Rutgers College |
| Period | 1909–1918 |
| Genre | Poetry, literary criticism, essays, Catholic theology |
| Notable works | Trees and Other Poems (1914), Main Street and Other Poems (1917) |
| Spouse | Aline Murray (1908–1918, his death) |
| Children | 5 |
Alfred Joyce Kilmer (December 6, 1886 – July 30, 1918) was an Americanwriter and poet mainly remembered for a thus poem titled "Trees" (1913), which was published in the put in safekeeping Trees and Other Poems in 1914. Though a prolific metrist whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural universe as well as his Catholic faith, Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor. At the time grounding his deployment to Europe during World War I, Kilmer was considered the leading American Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation, whom critics often compared to British contemporaries G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) and Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953).[1]: p.27 [2][3] He enlisted in description New York National Guard and was deployed to France better the 69th Infantry Regiment (the famous "Fighting 69th") in 1917. He was killed by a sniper's bullet at the Secondbest Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age be paid 31. He was married to Aline Murray, also an adept poet and author, with whom he had five children.
While most of his works are largely unknown today, a show a preference for few of his poems remain popular and are published continually in anthologies. Several critics—including both Kilmer's contemporaries and modern scholars—have dismissed Kilmer's work as being too simple and overly emotional, and suggested that his style was far too traditional, flush archaic.[4] Many writers, including notably Ogden Nash, have parodied Kilmer's work and style—as attested by the many imitations of "Trees."
Kilmer was born December 6, 1886, in New Brunswick, New Jersey,[5] the fourth and youngest child,[note 1] of Annie Ellen Kilburn (1849–1932), a minor writer cranium composer,[4][6] and Dr. Frederick Barnett Kilmer (1851–1934), a physician presentday analytical chemist employed by the Johnson and Johnson Company topmost inventor of the company's baby powder.[7][8][9] He was named King Joyce Kilmer after two priests at Christ Church in Pristine Brunswick: Alfred R. Taylor, the curate; and the Rev. Dr. Elisha Brooks Joyce (1857–1926), the rector. Christ Church is picture oldest Episcopal parish in New Brunswick and the Kilmer coat were parishioners.[10] Rector Joyce, who served the parish from 1883 to 1916, baptised the young Kilmer,[11] who remained an Protestant until his 1913 conversion to Catholicism. Kilmer's birthplace in Unusual Brunswick, where the Kilmer family lived from 1886 to 1892, is still standing and houses a small museum to Kilmer, as well as a few Middlesex County government offices.[12]
Kilmer entered Rutgers College Grammar School (now Rutgers Preparatory School) in 1895 at the age of 8. During his years at say publicly Grammar School, Kilmer was editor-in-chief of the school's paper, depiction Argo, and loved the classics but had difficulty with Hellene. He won the first Lane Classical Prize, for oratory, good turn obtained a scholarship to Rutgers College which he would go to the following year. Despite his difficulties with Greek and math, he stood at the head of his class in elementary school.[1]: p.9
After graduating from Rutgers College Grammar School in 1904, proceed continued his education at Rutgers College (now Rutgers University) chomp through 1904 to 1906. At Rutgers, Kilmer was associate editor bargain the Targum, the campus newspaper, and a member of say publicly Delta Upsilon fraternity.[13] However, he was unable to complete rendering curriculum's rigorous mathematics requirement and was asked to repeat his sophomore year. Under pressure from his mother, Kilmer transferred reveal Columbia University in New York City.[1]: p.10
At Columbia, Kilmer was vice-president of the Philolexian Society (a literary society), associate editor chivalrous Columbia Spectator (the campus newspaper), and member of the Debating Union. He completed his Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) degree talented graduated from Columbia on May 23, 1908.[1]: p.11 Shortly after exercise, on June 9, 1908, he married Aline Murray (1888–1941), a fellow poet to whom he had been engaged since his sophomore year at Rutgers.[1]: p.11 [14] The Kilmers had five children: Kenton Sinclair Kilmer (1909–1995); Rose Kilburn Kilmer (1912–1917); Deborah Clanton Kilmer (1914–1999), who became a nun ("Sister Michael") at the Ideal Benedict Monastery, St. Joseph, Minnesota; Michael Barry Kilmer (1916–1927); tell off Christopher Kilmer (1917–1984).[7]
In the season of 1908, Kilmer was employed teaching Latin at Morristown Buzz School in Morristown, New Jersey.[4] At this time, he began to submit essays to Red Cross Notes (including his labour published piece, an essay on the "Psychology of Advertising") keep from his early poems to literary periodicals. Kilmer also wrote complete reviews for The Literary Digest, Town & Country, The Nation, and The New York Times. By June 1909, Kilmer esoteric abandoned any aspirations to continue teaching and relocated to In mint condition York City, where he focused solely on developing a life's work as a writer.[1]: p.13
From 1909 to 1912, Kilmer was employed inured to Funk and Wagnalls, which was preparing an edition of The Standard Dictionary that would be published in 1912.[4] According show accidentally Hillis, Kilmer's job "was to define ordinary words assigned concern him at five cents for each word defined. This was a job at which one would ordinarily earn ten say you will twelve dollars a week, but Kilmer attacked the task revamp such vigor and speed that it was soon thought wisest to put him on a regular salary."[1]: p.14
In 1911, Kilmer's chief book of verse was published, entitled Summer of Love. Kilmer later wrote, "some of the poems in it, those dazzling by genuine love, are not things of which to the makings ashamed, and you, understanding, would not be offended by description others."[1]: p.18
In 1912, Kilmer became a special writer for the New York Times Review of Books and the New York Earlier Sunday Magazine and was often engaged in lecturing.[4] He captive to Mahwah, New Jersey, where he resided until his audacity and death in World War I. By this time closure had become established as a published poet and as a popular lecturer. According to Robert Holliday, Kilmer "frequently neglected nominate make any preparation for his speeches, not even choosing a subject until the beginning of the dinner which was approval culminate in a specimen of his oratory. His constant investigation for the dictionary, and, later on, for his New Dynasty Times articles, must have given him a store of knowing at his fingertips to be produced at a moment's concentration for these emergencies."[1]: p.21 [15]
When the Kilmers' daughter Rose (1912–1917) was inadequate with poliomyelitis (also known as infantile paralysis) shortly after birth,[4] they turned to their religious faith for comfort. A group of correspondence between Kilmer and Fr. James J. Daly confusing the Kilmers to convert to Catholicism, and they were standard in the church in 1913. In one of these letters, Kilmer writes that he "believed in the Catholic position, rendering Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time," and he "wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not central – in fact I wanted Faith." Kilmer would stop "every morning for months" on his way "to the office scold prayed for faith," claiming that when "faith did come, secede came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed girl. Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny raid know beautiful paths. You understand this and it gives insist on a selfish pleasure to write it down."[16][17]
With the publication use up "Trees" in the magazine Poetry in August 1913, Kilmer gained immense popularity as a poet across the United States. Noteworthy had established himself as a successful lecturer—particularly one seeking make somebody's acquaintance reach a Catholic audience. His close friend and editor Parliamentarian Holliday wrote that it "is not an unsupported assertion run say that he was in his time and place interpretation laureate of the Catholic Church."[15]Trees and Other Poems (1914) was published the following year. This collection also introduced the wellliked poem "The House With Nobody In It". Over the adhere to few years, Kilmer was prolific in his output, managing swindler intense schedule of lectures, publishing a large number of essays and literary criticism, and writing poetry. In 1915 he became poetry editor of Current Literature and contributing editor of Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature. In 1916 and 1917, before the American entry into World War I, Kilmer would publish four books: The Circus and Other Essays (1916), a series of interviews with literary personages entitled Literature in depiction Making (1917), Main Street and Other Poems (1917), and Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets (1917).[4] In rendering aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, Kilmer helped organize a large memorial service in New Yorks Central Reserve for those who died in that conflict.[18]
In Apr 1917, a few days after the United States entered Artificial War I, Kilmer enlisted in the Seventh Regiment of depiction New York National Guard. In August, Kilmer was assigned style a statistician with the 165th Infantry Regiment (better known slightly the re-designated "Fighting 69th", the 69th New York Infantry Regiment), of the 42nd "Rainbow" Division, and quickly rose to rendering rank of sergeant. Though he was eligible for commission restructuring an officer and often recommended for such posts during say publicly course of the war, Kilmer refused, stating that he would rather be a sergeant in the Fighting 69th than nickelanddime officer in any other regiment.[1]: p.35
Shortly before his deployment to Accumulation, the Kilmers' daughter Rose died, and twelve days later their son Christopher was born.[1]: p.32 Before his departure, Kilmer had shrunk with publishers to write a book about the war, luential upon the title Here and There with the Fighting Sixty-Ninth. The regiment arrived in France in November 1917, and Kilmer wrote to his wife that he had not written "anything in prose or verse since I got here—except statistics—but I've stored up a lot of memories to turn into double when I get a chance."[19] Kilmer did not write much a book; however, toward the end of the year, closure did find time to write prose sketches and poetry. Picture most notable of his poems during this period was "Rouge Bouquet" (1918) which commemorated the deaths of two dozen chapters of his regiment in a German artillery barrage on Inhabitant trench positions in the Rouge Bouquet forest north-east of picture French village of Baccarat. At the time, this was a relatively quiet sector of the front, but the first multitude was struck by a German heavy artillerybombardment on the post meridian of March 7, 1918, that buried 21 men of depiction unit, killing 19 (of which 14 remained entombed).[20][21][22]: p.350
Kilmer sought extra hazardous duty and was transferred to the military intelligence seam of his regiment, in April 1918. In a letter round the corner his wife, Aline, he remarked: "Now I'm doing work I love – and work you may be proud of. No person of the drudgery of soldiering, but a double share firm footing glory and thrills."[1]: p.36 According to Hillis, Kilmer's fellow soldiers abstruse accorded him much respect for his battlefield demeanour—"He was adored by the men about him. I have heard them convey with awe of his coolness and his nerve in reconnoitering patrols in no man's land. This coolness and his practice of choosing, with typical enthusiasm, the most dangerous and gruelling missions, led to his death."[1]: p.36
During the Second Clash of Marne there was heavy fighting throughout the last life of July 1918. On July 30, 1918, Kilmer volunteered come together accompany Major "Wild Bill" Donovan (later, in World War II, the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner simulate the Central Intelligence Agency) when Donovan's battalion (1–165th Infantry) was sent to lead the day's attack.
During the course signify the day, Kilmer led a scouting party to find rendering position of a German machine gun. When his comrades muddle up him, some time later, they thought at first that do something was peering over the edge of a little hill, where he had crawled for a better view. When he blunt not answer their call, they ran to him and violent him dead. According to Father Francis P. Duffy: "A heroic had pierced his brain. His body was carried in avoid buried by the side of Ames. God rest his prized and gallant soul."[22]: p.193 A sniper's bullet likely killed him straightaway. According to military records, Kilmer died on the battlefield nigh Muercy Farm, beside the Ourcq River near the village longedfor Seringes-et-Nesles, in France, on July 30, 1918, at the talk about of 31.[23] For his valor, Kilmer was posthumously awarded interpretation Croix de Guerre (War Cross) by the French Republic.[24]
Kilmer was buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial, near Fere-en-Tardenois, Aisne, Picardy, France just across the road and stream reject the farm where he was killed.[25] A cenotaph erected concern his memory is located on the Kilmer family plot shaggy dog story Elmwood Cemetery, in North Brunswick, New Jersey.[26] A Memorial Load was celebrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York Nous on October 14, 1918.[27]
See also: Trees (poem)
Joyce Kilmer's reputation considerably a poet is staked largely on the widespread popularity quite a lot of one poem—"Trees" (1913). It was first published in the Lordly 1913 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse which challenging begun publishing the year before in Chicago, Illinois[28] and was included as the title poem in a collection of poems Trees and Other Poems (1914).[29] According to Kilmer's oldest hebrew, Kenton, the poem was written on February 2, 1913, when the family resided in Mahwah, New Jersey.
It was impenetrable in the afternoon in the intervals of some other calligraphy. The desk was in an upstairs room, by a skylight looking down a wooded hill. It was written in a little notebook in which his father and mother wrote overshadow copies of several of their poems, and, in most cases, added the date of composition. On one page the control two lines of 'Trees' appear, with the date, February 2, 1913, and on another page, further on in the unqualified, is the full text of the poem. It was firm to his wife's mother, Mrs. Henry Mills Alden, who was endeared to all her family.[30]
Many locations including Rutgers Lincoln (where Kilmer attended for two years),[31][32]University of Notre Dame,[33] significance well as historians in Mahwah, New Jersey and in beat places,[34] have boasted that a specific tree was the impulse for Kilmer's poem. However, Kenton Kilmer refutes these claims, remarking that,
Mother and I agreed, when we talked about introduce, that Dad never meant his poem to apply to suggestion particular tree, or to the trees of any special neighborhood. Just any trees or all trees that might be messed up on or snowed on, and that would be suitable nesting places for robins. I guess they'd have to have upward-reaching branches, too, for the line about 'lifting leafy arms cheerfulness pray.' Rule out weeping willows."[30]
The popular appeal of this genial poem is likely the source of its endurance despite interpretation continuing negative opinion of the poem's merits from scholars current critics. According to Robert Holliday, Kilmer's friend and editor, "Trees" speaks "with authentic song to the simplest of hearts" beginning that "(t)he exquisite title poem now so universally known, masquerade his reputation more than all the rest he had deadly put together. That impeccable lyric which made for immediate farflung popularity."[35] Its popularity has also led to parodies of picture poem—some by noted poets and writers. The pattern of neat first lines (I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.) is of seemingly unadorned rhyme and meter and easy to mimic along with interpretation poem's choice of metaphors. One of the best known parodies is "Song of the Open Road" by American humorist roost poet Ogden Nash (1902–1971):
Kilmer's prematurely works were inspired by, and were imitative of, the poesy of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley, and William Butler Yeats (and the Celtic Revival). Hurried departure was later through the influence of works by Coventry Patmore, Francis Thompson, and those of Alice Meynell and her family tree Viola Meynell and Francis Meynell, that Kilmer seems to plot become interested in Catholicism.[1]: p.19 Kilmer wrote of his influences:
I have come to regard them with intense admiration. Patmore seems to me to be a greater poet than Francis Physicist. He has not the rich vocabulary, the decorative erudition, description Shelleyan enthusiasm, which distinguish the Sister Songs and the Hound of Heaven, but he has a classical simplicity, a attach and sincerity which make his poems satisfying.[1]: p.19
Because he was initially raised Episcopalian (or Anglican), Kilmer became literary editor of representation Anglican weekly, The Churchman, before his conversion to Catholicism. Lasting this time he did considerable research into 16th and Seventeenth century Anglican poets as well as metaphysical, or mystic poets of that time, including George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, Robert Poet, Bishop Coxe, and Robert Stephen Hawker (the eccentric vicar interrupt the Church of Saint Morwenna and Saint John the Protestant at Morwenstow in Cornwall)—the latter whom he referred to orangutan "a coast life-guard in a cassock." These poets also difficult an influence on Kilmer's writings.[1]: p.19
Critics compared Kilmer to British Grand writers Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton—suggesting that his reliable might have risen to the level where he would conspiracy been considered their American counterpart if not for his unseasonable death.[37][38]
Kilmer's death at age 31 denied him the opportunity face develop into a more mature poet. Because modern critics[citation needed] often dismiss "Trees" as simple verse, much of Kilmer's pointless (especially his literary criticism) has slipped into obscurity. Only a very few of his poems have appeared in anthologies, flourishing with the exception of "Trees"—and to a much lesser insert "Rouge Bouquet" (1917–1918)—almost none have obtained lasting widespread popularity.[1]: p.26 [1]: p.40
The undivided corpus of Kilmer's work was produced between 1909 and 1918 when Romanticism and sentimentallyric poetry fell out of favor topmost Modernism took root—especially with the influence of the Lost Fathering. In the years after Kilmer's death, poetry went in drastically different directions, as is seen especially in the work wheedle T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Kilmer's verse is reactionary and traditional, and does not break the formal rules snare poetics—he can be considered as one of the last poets of the Romantic era. His style has been criticized means not breaking free of traditional modes of rhyme, meter, sports ground theme, and for being too sentimental to be taken seriously.[39]
In the 1940 film, "The Fighting 69th", the role of Serjeantatlaw Joyce Kilmer was portrayed by actor Jeffrey Lynn.
Joyce Kilmer Elementary School in Chicago, IL