Nearly 100 years after it was written, Joyce Kilmer's 12-line poem in rhyming couplets, "Trees," appears to be alive and well. It has survived the ruthless critical dissection which the so-called New Critics of the 1950s, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, performed when they famously wrote, in their then cutting-edge textbook, "Understanding Poetry," that "Trees" presents the ridiculous visual image of a girl standing on her head. Its kitschy sentimentality notwithstanding, not long ago I took the liberty of beginning my portrait of our current commander-in-chief in a poem called "Bush": "I think that I shall never see / a president as great as he."
Among the many curious tidbits Sarah Elzas's soft feature presents is the fact that Garden Stater Kilmer, who had a diehard penchant for Edwardian verse, wrote spoofs of such trendy modern poets as Ezra Pound, using the pen name of Alfred Watts. One hilarious take-off "Watts" composed begins and ends: "Eyes like little green apples. . . / And the water rats are tired"!
This drop-in would be a humdinger for National Poetry Month.
Review of Joyce Kilmer and Trees
James Reiss
Posted on February 23, 2007 at 03:42 AM
Nearly 100 years after it was written, Joyce Kilmer's 12-line poem in rhyming couplets, "Trees," appears to be alive and well. It has survived the ruthless critical dissection which the so-called New Critics of the 1950s, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, performed when they famously wrote, in their then cutting-edge textbook, "Understanding Poetry," that "Trees" presents the ridiculous visual image of a girl standing on her head. Its kitschy sentimentality notwithstanding, not long ago I took the liberty of beginning my portrait of our current commander-in-chief in a poem called "Bush": "I think that I shall never see / a president as great as he."
Among the many curious tidbits Sarah Elzas's soft feature presents is the fact that Garden Stater Kilmer, who had a diehard penchant for Edwardian verse, wrote spoofs of such trendy modern poets as Ezra Pound, using the pen name of Alfred Watts. One hilarious take-off "Watts" composed begins and ends: "Eyes like little green apples. . . / And the water rats are tired"!
This drop-in would be a humdinger for National Poetry Month.