NB: This is an update of last year’s post, although really more of a backdate…you’ll see what I mean. As far as I know, the Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest has not taken place yet this year.

It’s the birthday of journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918, #diedtooyoung), best known for a single poem, “Trees” (1913), which begins, “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.” His memory also lives on in the Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest held every year at Columbia University, Kilmer’s alma mater.

Kilmer was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and went to Rutgers College from 1904 to 1906, then transferred to Columbia, graduating in 1908. He married Aline Murray and they had five children. Kilmer began teaching and writing poems, essays, and book reviews; he also worked for several years defining words for The Standard Dictionary (1912). He published his first collection of poems, Summer of Love, in 1911. His poems first showed the influence of Yeats and other Irish poets, but after Kilmer converted to Catholicism in 1913 he strove to emulate the Metaphysical poets instead. When “Trees” was published in Poetry magazine, Kilmer became extremely popular. By then he was writing for the New York Times Review of Books and New York Times Sunday Magazine, and he began lecturing as well.

When the U.S. joined WWI, Kilmer voluntarily enlisted and at his own request joined the infantry and was sent to Europe, where he was killed in the Battle of Ourcq by a sniper’s bullet; France awarded him the Croix de Guerre posthumously. He was only 31 at the time of his death. “Trees” continues to be a popular poem today in spite of critics disparaging it as sappy and sentimental.

The winner of the 2007 Alfred Joyce Kilmer etc. Contest was won by Amitai Schlair and was titled:

“My Husband Was In There, Like A Kumquat!

or, Explosion At The Poem Factory

or, 364 Days Without A Lost Rhyme Accident

or, St. Elmo’s Fife

or, It’s Definitely One Of These Titles, We Haven’t Conclusively Determined Which Quite Yet, But Don’t Worry, Forensic Poets Are Already On The Scene And We’ll Be Sure To Keep You Posted

or, This Just In, It’s Not The Fife One.”

(Read the whole thing here.)

You could do worse, actually, than give in to a smidge of sentimentality this fine snowy Friday as you stay scrupulously honest to the data.