Alfred joyce kilmer biography for kids

Joyce Kilmer
Poet, journalist, essayist and lecturer
Born: December 7, 1886, in New Brunswick, New Jersey
Died: July 30, 1918, near Marne, France
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2019-20: Arts & Letters

The poem “Trees” is only 12 lines long but it has developed deep roots as one of America’s best-remembered and often-taught pieces of rhyme. When published in August 1913, it made a literary star of its author, Joyce Kilmer, then a 26-year-old resident of Mahwah.

Kilmer’s mother was a writer and composer; his father, a Johnson & Johnson physician/analytical chemist, invented the company’s baby powder, Alfred Joyce Kilmer began his higher education at Rutgers College (now University), where he was associate editor of the Targum, the campus newspaper. He transferred to Columbia University and received his bachelor or arts degree in 1908.

After graduation, Kilmer taught Latin at Morristown High School and wrote book reviews for several publications, including The New York Times. He left teaching and took a job in New York City as a dictionary editor. He later worked as a special writer for The New York Times Review of Books and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

In 1912, Kilmer and his wife, Aline, settled in Mahwah in a small white house on Airmount Road. Here, Kilmer could write in an upstairs room looking out on a grove of trees, “from mature trees to thin saplings,” his eldest son, Kenton, later recalled.

On February 2, 1913, inspired by his upstairs view, Kilmer wrote the 12 lines that would make him famous, beginning,

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

Published in a poetry collection later that year, “Trees” took Kilmer by surprise, as it “caught fire around the world,” Kilmer expert Alex Michelini, founder of the Joyce Kilmer Society of Mahwah, told New Jersey Monthly in 2013.

Newly famous, Kilmer continued to write and edit and maintained a busy schedule as a lecturer. Immensely popular, he published numerous coll

Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918), the noted American poet killed in action during World War I, was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on 6 December 1886.

Educated first at Rutgers College in 1904 and then at Columbia University, Kilmer worked from 1909-12 - after a brief stint as a salesman - for Funk and Wagnall, helping to edit their Standard Dictionary.

Although Kilmer exhibited early signs of radicalism and was indeed something of a socialist, he nevertheless retained a deep religious sense throughout his life.  A one-time Literary Editor of The Churchman newspaper, an Anglican journal, Kilmer himself converted to Catholicism in 1913.

In June 1908 Kilmer married Aline; they had five children.  In 1911 Kilmer's first volume of poetry, entitled A Summer of Love, was published to acclaim.  In 1913 he joined The New York Times, also writing for The Nation and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.  The fame his writings brought him earned him an entry in Who's Who.

Although married and with children Kilmer volunteered for service in 1917 following America's entry into World War I.  Enlisting as a private with the 7th Regiment, National Guard in New York, he sought and received a transfer shortly afterwards to 165th Infantry (part of the famed Rainbow Division).

While in training at Camp Mills Kilmer was appointed Senior Regimental Statistician and, once on the Western Front in France, he earned promotion to Sergeant and was posted to the Regimental Intelligence Staff as an observer.  In this post he would spend many dangerous nights out in No Man's Land gathering tactical information.

It was while out scouting for enemy machine guns near Ourcq that Kilmer was shot through the brain on 30 July 1918.  He was aged 31.  He was posthumously awarded the French Croix de Guerre.

Kilmer's best-known poem today is

Joyce Kilmer was born on December 6, 1886, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Kilmer attended Rutgers Preparatory School and graduated in 1904. He attended Rutgers College from 1904 to 1906, then transferred to Columbia University, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1908. That same year, he married poet Aline Murray.

After Kilmer graduated college, he took a job teaching Latin at a high school in Morristown, New Jersey, and wrote features for The Literary Digest, The Nation, Town & Country, and The New York Times. From 1909 to 1912, he worked for Funk and Wagnalls, writing definitions for The Standard Dictionary, and continued to write magazine articles for publication.

In 1911, Kilmer published his first poetry collection, A Summer of Love (The Baker & Taylor Company). Two years later, he published what would become his most famous poem, “Trees,” in Poetry magazine. The poem was included in his second collection, Trees and Other Poems (Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1914). 

Kilmer published his last poetry collection, Main Street and Other Poems (George H. Doran Company, 1917), the same year he enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve in World War I, during which time he continued to write poems while fighting in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment. He died of a gunshot from a German sniper on July 30, 1918.

In 1913, two years after the Baker & Taylor Company published his first book, A Summer of Love, Joyce Kilmer wrote a simple, fourteen-line poem that would become his most famous work. He titled it, Trees. It first appeared in Poetry magazine.

Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in December 1886. His father, Frederick was a Connecticut born (1851) chemist; his mother, Annie was born (1852) in New York. The couple had four children, but only Joyce lived past infancy.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for his given name. He was named Alfred Joyce Kilmer after two priests at Christ Church in New Brunswick: Alfred R. Taylor, the curate; and the Rev. Dr. Elisha Brooks Joyce, the rector. Kilmer chose to be called Joyce; he liked the way it “sounded.”

Kilmer attended Rutgers Preparatory School and graduated in 1904, after which he attended Rutgers College for two years, then transferred to Columbia University, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1908. He married Aline Murry later that year. Aline was a Virginia born (1888) writer who specialized in short stories for children. The couple had one son