I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
(Trees, 1-2)
Poet and literary journalist, Joyce Kilmer was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, attended Rutgers and obtained his A.B. degree from Columbia University in 1908, and married Aline Murray the same year. They had four children, and during this time Kilmer became a Roman Catholic. By 1913, he was working on the Sunday magazine and book-review sections of the New York Times, but his first book of poems, Trees and Other Poems (1914), quickly established his reputation as a popular religious poet. He enlisted in the New York National Guard and died in the 165th Regiment of the Rainbow Division at the second Battle of the Marne on July 30, 1918. He received a posthumous Croix de Guerre and was buried in France. In that year Robert Cortes Holliday brought out a memoir with Kilmer's poems (reprinted in 1968 by Kennikat Press), but a fuller life appears in the autobiography of his mother, Annie Kilburn Kilmer, Leaves from My Life (New York: Frye, 1925; PS 3521 I38Z65 Robarts Library).
Miriam A. Kilmer, the poet's granddaughter and child of his son Kenton, edits most of Joyce's poems on an attractive, informative Web site at www.risingdove.com/risingdove/literaturesite.asp. I am grateful to Miriam Kilmer for a correction to the RPO Kilmer selection.
Given name: Joyce
Family name: Kilmer
Birth date: 6 December 1886
Death date: 30 July 1918
Nationality: American
Education
Rutgers College Grammar Sch. (Rutgers Preparatory): 1895 to 1904
Rutgers College: 1904 to 1906
Columbia College of Columbia University (B.A.): 1906 to 1908
Honour: Croix de Guerre (War Cross) by the French Republic: 1919
Literary movement: First World War Poets
Literary period: Modern
Occupations
Journalist
School-teacher: 1908 to 1909
Lexicographer: 1909 to 1912
Soldier: 1917 to 1918
Residence: New Brunswick, New Jersey: 1886
Cause of death: War casualty
Buried at: Oise-Aisne Cemetery, Fere-en-Tardenois, France