Joyce Kilmer Poems

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Joyce Kilmer
Alfred Joyce Kilmer (6 December 1886 – 30 July 1918) was an American journalist, poet, literary critic, lecturer and editor. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his religious faith, Kilmer is remembered most for a poem entitled "Trees" (1913) which was published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914. While most of his works are unknown, a select few of his poems remain popular and are published frequently in anthologies. Several critics, both Kilmer's contemporaries and modern scholars, disparaged Kilmer's work as being too simple, overly sentimental, and that his style was far too traditional, even archaic. At the time of his deployment to Europe during the first World War (1914-1918), Kilmer was considered the leading American Roman Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation, whom critics often compared to British contemporaries G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) and Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953).A sergeant in the 165th U.S. Infantry Regiment, Kilmer was killed at the Second Battle of Marne in 1918 at the age of 31.

the pessimist
 
 
Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes
... [read poem]
trees
 
 
(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a t... [read poem]
toboggan
 
 
Down from the hills and over the snow
Swift as a meteor's flash we go,
Toboggan! Tobog... [read poem]
injun summah
 
 
De Injun summah's comin',
De bees is all froo hummin',
De watah-mellon thumbin'
H... [read poem]
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