Literature in the making, by some of its makers

by Joyce Kilmer

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

342 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2003

About the author

People best know " Trees " (1913), work of American poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer, whom World War I killed.

Works of this prolific journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his religious faith; people remember him most for this short poem, published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914.
Despite his mostly unknown works, anthologies publish frequently a select few of his popular poems. Several contemporary critics of Kilmer and modern scholars disparaged his too simple, overly sentimental work and suggested his far too traditional, even archaic style.

Critics often compared Kilmer, considered the leading Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation in America to British contemporaries Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) and Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953). Army of the United States deployed him to Europe at the time during the First World War as a sergeant in the 165th United States infantry regiment; the second battle of the Marne in 1918 killed Kilmer at 31 years of age.