Joyce Kilmer's Famous Poem "Trees" Finally Gets "Birth Certificate" on 100th Anniversary

Feb. 5, 2013 - PRLog -- By Alex Michelini
MAHWAH, NJ -- Joyce Kilmer's 100-year old poem "Trees" finally has a "birth certificate."
One of the world's most famous and often-quoted poems was written in his Mahwah, NJ house and dated February 2, 1913, the Mahwah Historic Preservation Commission discovered from research of Joyce Kilmer letters and notebook, interviews by Kilmer's family and real estate data.
"We have a unique history in Mahwah and I think it's so important to preserve that," Mahwah Mayor Bill Laforet told Mahwah Patch Editor Jessica Mazzola as the township issued a proclamation declaring February 2nd as Joyce Kilmer Day now and hereafter.
"And it's an extremely significant mark in time. It'd be wrong for us not to recognize the 100th anniversary."
The multi-floor Kilmer house is still standing at the southwest corner of Airmount and Armour Roads in leafy Mahwah, NJ, 35 miles from Times Square in Manhattan, and the huge boulder that the Kilmers loved so much still stands sentry near the front door.
The only thing missing was authoritative proof of where Kilmer penned the poem and when, and that is now no longer a mystery.
The local historic preservation commission said its extensive research revealed:

         * Joyce Kilmer purchased a lot for a house in the fledgling Cragmere Park section of Mahwah in 1911.

         *  Kilmer, his wife, Aline and their son, Kenton, moved into the house in 1912, and lived there until 1917.

         * Son Kenton, in a book entitled "Memories of My Father, Joyce Kilmer" and in telephone interviews, said he had the notebook in which the poem was written in their Mahwah home and the poem was dated February 2, 1913. He said it was written in an upstairs bedroom that also served as Joyce's office and that "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 don't know what else."

       * Dorothy V. Corson, author of "The Spirit of Notre Dame," said she interviewed Kenton and subsequently received additonal written material from him. She said Kenton told her: "It ("Trees") was written in the afternoon in the intervals of some other writing. The desk was in an upstairs room, by a window looking down a wooded hill. It was written in a little notebook in which his father (Joyce) and mother (Aline, also a poet) wrote out copies of several of their poems, and in most cases added the date of composition. On one page the first two lines of "Trees" appear, with the date, February 2, 1913, and on another page, further on in the book, is the full text of the poem."

       * Deborah Kilmer, Joyce Kilmer's daughter who became a Benedictine nun, corroborated Kenton's evidence in a separate interview with Corson.

       * In a May 4, 1913 letter (four months after the February 2 date) Joyce Kilmer wrote his mother, Annie Kilbourn Kilmer, also a poet, that "Trees" would probably be published in Poetry magazine.

       * In the August, 1913 issue of Poetry magazine, "Trees" was pubished for the first time. The front page listed "Trees...by Joyce Kilmer" as the third poem in the Table of Contents.

        *Joyce Kilmer's grand-daughter, Miriam A. Kilmer, an artist and keeper of Kilmer history, corroborated her father Kenton's account of the writing of "Trees" on her website, RisingDove.com.

         For years, a score or more of towns across America have attempted to lay claim to the distinction that it was their tree or trees that "inspired" Kilmer to write the poem -- in particular, New Brunswick, NJ, Kilmer's birthplace and site of a 300-year old white oak on the Rutgers University campus where Kilmer studied for two years.

The tree was demolished on September 19, 1963, and in a December 26, 1986 story, the Times said: "Rutgers said it could not prove that Kilmer...had been inspired by the oak."

Another claim fell to a timeline contradition: Campion College in Prairie du Chein, WI, said it was one of their trees that inspired Kilmer duirng one of his four visits to the tree-shaded campus of the Jesuit college. However, the visits began in 1916 -- three years after Kilmer wrote and had the poem published.

Even a University of Notre Dame brochure described how a visiting Kilmer received his inspiration from "a big tree" shading the Virgin Mary in a grotto at the school. But this was pure speculation, and author Corson put it to rest.

At the proclamation ceremony designating "Joyce Kilmer Day" in Mahwah February 1, Mahwah Councilman John Roth told Record newspaper reporter Allison Pries: "Nobody else has the validation that we have."

Fellow Councilman John Spiech flatly declared: "We're staking our own claim."

Kilmer was far more than a poet. In his relatively short life of 31 years, he became an accomplished literary critic and lecturer, a versatile journalist, the leading
American laureate of the Catholic Church of his generation (after converting to Catholicism after a daughter contracted and died of polio in 1913).

And he was far more than just a body in a bed in Mahwah.

"It is very nice out here in the spring," he wrote his mother. "There are large numbers of violets, ranging in color from deep blue almost to red, and some of them are striped light blue and white. Also there is an admirable dog-wood tree near the house, and we have planted several vines."

On his walks along Franklin Turnpike in Mahwah to catch an express train in bordering Suffern, NY, to his job as a reporter at The New York Sunday Times, Kilmer was struck by an empty farmhouse, and led to his sad and poignant "The House With Nobody In It."

In another letter to his mother, Kilmer spoke of his forays into the lush country landscape of Mahwah.

"The mountains about here are very interesting," he wrote. "Recently, I climbed two of them with my friend. We found on Mt. Houvenkopf an old artist and wife, the only white people for many miles. The natives live in log cabins and are called Jackson Whites. There is a fine view from the mountains, and the valley between them is full of wild honeysuckle."

He later penned a 1914 poem entitled "Mount Houvenkopf" that began: "Serene he stands, with mist serenly crowned."

For a long time, the Kilmers wanted a sun dial, and they decided to buy one and place it either on a post in the front yard or fasten it "to a great boulder that is already there."

The sundial apparently never materialized, but the boulder remains bearing a 1952 memorial plaque from Mrs. Helen Biggs' Mahwah Garden Club with an inscription identifying this house as Joyce Kilmer's residence when he wrote "Trees."

Kilmer died in the Second Battle of the Marne in the forests of France on July 30, 1918 when he was shot by a German sniper during an intelligence mission. He was buried in France and posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French Republic. A cenotaph (empty tomb/monument) was erected at his family plot in Elmwood Cemetery,  New Brunswick, NJ.

After Kilmer's death, "The Outlook" weekly current events magazine wrote:

"He looked at a tree and made a great discovery, and no one who has read the poem that Joyce Kilmer made in celebration will ever look in wonder at a tree again without remembering what Kilmer said of it and of its brethren."

(Note: Alex Michelini is a former member of the Mahwah Historic Preservation Commission, and has lived in Mahwah for the last 28 years. He is a former reporter/editor at the New York Daily News and received numerous awards for journalistic excellence, including the New York Press Club's Gold Typewriter Award twice, and was nominated and reached the finals of the Pulitzer Prize for a series on soaring healthcare costs.)

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Contact:
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T. 201-831-0171
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