ABSTRACT
K nown variously as a war poet, a sentimental poet, a Catholicpoet, and a New jersey poet, joyce Kilmer is as fondly recalled in some circles as he is vilified or ignored in others. Despite his active although brief career as a poet, reviewer, editor, and anthologist, Kilmer's contributions to American literary history are most often reduced to the enormous national and international renown of his poem "Trees." This now notorious poem, whether viewed as a symbol of the divide between academic and popular poetic tastes or as enduring proof that poetry can and does have a place in people's everyday lives, has provoked much debate about value and popularity in 20th-century American poetry. Moreover, Kilmer's work as a whole, along with the devotion to the arts shared by the Kilmer family, demonstrates an unabashed moral idealism much in keeping with the Puritan tradition in American poetry even if it is quite at odds with the disillusionment characteristic of much World War I-era poetry.
