Trees / Joyce Kilmer

Plaque in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, North Carolina. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

"Trees" is a poem by American poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918).

Trees

Photo by 'J.D. Forrester. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
 
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
 
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
 
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
 
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
 
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

History

Kilmer wrote "Trees" on February 2, 1913, at his home in Mahwah, New Jersey. It was first published in Poetry magazine in August 1913. It appeared in his 1914 collection, Trees and Other Poems.

The poem was dedicated to Mrs. Henry Mills Alden (Ada Foster Murray Alden), [[Aline Kilmer|his wife]]'s mother and a poet in her own right.

Song

"Trees" has been given several musical settings that were quite popular in the 1940s and 1950s, the most popular written by Oscar Rasbach in 1922, with renditions performed by Ernestine Schumann-Heink, John Charles Thomas, Nelson Eddy, Robert Merrill and Paul Robeson.

Parodies

There have been several variations on the text, including many parody texts substituted to mimic Kilmer's seemingly simple rhyme and meter, and questioning the poem's choice of metaphors. Of the often repeated parodies, one of the most known is "Song of the Open Road" by Ogden Nash (1902–1971):

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall,

I'll never see a tree at all.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who followed Kilmer in the Philolexian Society of Columbia University by some 30 years, once wrote a parody called "Chee$e" (with a dollar sign substituting for the letter "s,"), which mocked the lucrative sale of homemade cheese by his monastery, the Abbey of Gethsemani. Among the lines was "The sucker's hungry mouth is pressed/Against the cheese's caraway breast."

In the Our Gang short "Arbor Day," Alfalfa, after the cue in a Woodsman-spare-that-tree exchange with Spanky, sings "Trees," in what Leonard Maltin called "the poem's all-time worst rendition," with his whiny, strained voice.

In his album Caught in the Act, Victor Borge, at one point, when playing requests, says, "Sorry I don't know that 'Doggie in the Window'. I know one that comes pretty close to it." Then he starts to play "Trees."

"Trees" was popularised in 1948 by the eponym segment of Melody Time, an animated feature produced by Walt Disney, and also in the 1980 film Superman II, of which there are two versions, one directed by Richard Donner and one directed by Richard Lester . Donner's original version, belatedly released in 2006, has Marlon Brando reading Kilmer's poem. These scenes had been shot in April 1977. Lester had British actor John Hollis reprise Brando's role in July 1979, and it is he who appears in the original 1980 theatrical release. When Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor cuts short the recitation, his assistant Miss Teshmocker, played by Valerie Perrine, protests, "I like Trees." Luthor responds, "So does your average cocker spaniel."

Inspiration

According to Kilmer's son, Kenton, the poem — which was not inspired by any specific tree but about trees in general — was written "...in an upstairs bedroom ... which served as Mother's and Dad's bedroom and also as Dad's office.... The window looked out down a hill, on our well-wooded lawn - trees of many kinds, from mature trees to thin saplings: oaks, maples, black and white birches, and I do not know what else." However, a 1915 interview with Kilmer "pointed out that while Kilmer might be widely known for his affection for trees, his affection was certainly not sentimental - the most distinguished feature of Kilmer's property was a colossal woodpile outside his home. The house stood in the middle of a forest and what lawn it possessed was obtained only after Kilmer had spent months of weekend toil in chopping down trees, pulling up stumps, and splitting logs. Kilmer's neighbors had difficulty in believing that a man who could do that could also be a poet."

Many locations across the United States maintain legends that certain trees in their localities inspired Kilmer to write the poem. Most noted among them is the tradition in Kilmer's birthplace, New Brunswick, New Jersey, which states that Kilmer wrote the poem "Trees" after a large white oak (Quercus alba) tree that was located on the outskirts of town on the campus of Cook College (now known as the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences), at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. This tree, estimated to be over three hundred years old, was so weakened by age and disease that it had to be removed in 1963. Currently, saplings from acorns of the historic tree are being grown at the site, throughout the Middlesex County area, and in major arboretums around the United States. The remains of the original Kilmer Oak are currently kept in storage at Rutgers University.

Guy Davenport suggests quite a different inspiration. "Trees were favorite symbols for Yeats, Frost, and even the young Pound. [ . . . ] But Kilmer had been reading about trees in another context[,] the movement to stop child labor and set up nursery schools in slums. [ . . . ] Margaret McMillan . . . had the happy idea that a breath of fresh air and an intimate acquaintance with grass and trees were worth all the pencils and desks in the whole school system. [ . . . ] The English word for gymnasium equipment is 'apparatus.' And in her book Labour and Childhood (1907) you will find this sentence: 'Apparatus can be made by fools, but only God can make a tree.'"

Scansion and analysis

"Trees" has twelve lines of eight syllables in strict iambic tetrameter. The poem's rhyme scheme is rhyming couplets rendered aa bb cc dd ee aa.

Despite its deceptive simplicity in rhyme and meter, "Trees" is notable for its use of personification and anthropomorphic imagery: the tree of the poem, which Kilmer depicts as female, is depicted as pressing its mouth to the Earth's breast, looking at God, and raising its "leafy arms" to pray. The tree of the poem also has human physical attributes:  it has a "hungry mouth", arms, hair (in which Robins nest), and a bosom.

External links

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• Text of the poem in Modern American Poetry.