TREES:
SO WHAT?
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when every school child would have known this poem. Strike that—they would have known of this poem. What they really would have known would have been the first two (rhyming) lines and maybe the last two, which rhyme with the first. They would have had it assigned in school by that one category of English teacher, the enormous mustachioed woman who had either a parakeet named Petey or a timid husband (because why have both?), and they’d have been thrilled to hear it mocked by the young hep English teacher dude in the turtleneck sweater, who would dismiss it as “doggerel,” which, disappointingly, has nothing to do with dogs. Though you’d think that, if dogs did read poetry, their favorite one would be named “Trees.”
Whether you love and understand poetry or not, you’ve got to admit that “Trees” smells like a big ol’ wheel of Roquefort cheese. Rhyming generally does not help anybody understand any point worth making, nor does a pendulum rhythm (“I think that I shall nev-er see”). And when bland and obvious style is used to state the bland and obvious, the result will usually be a great big patronizing “Yes, that’s very nice.” Sometimes you get a writer who is so sincerely uninteresting that their naiveté is charming, but dumb, as a rule, is dumb.
Joyce Kilmer was a man, and “Joyce” was his given name, not just his tranny name. It was a time when men named “Leslie” and “Evelyn” and “Ashley” could show up for blind dates without fear of being punched in the nose. No priss, Kilmer did the things that a manly man did in his day. He fought in World War I and died of a sniper’s bullet in his brain (though a really tough manly-manly man would shake off the head shot, stand up and holler, “Is that the best you got?!”). He fathered five children. By our standards, these are not things associated with men named “Joyce,” but there are mitigating factors. For one, he was a devout Catholic, so fathering five children between his marriage in 1908 and his death in 1918 would only get him a solid “C+” from the Vatican, which at that time was giving their “excellent” awards to families that could average one child each seven months between ages sixteen and forty three. And, even though he died running down a machine gunner’s nest, most of his time in the army was spent as the statistician with the 42nd Rainbow Division. So, he wasn’t quite the lispy brittlebones that his name may indicate, but still, feel free to take a moment to snicker.
Since there is not really any question of whether “Trees” is a good poem—it isn’t—then the question becomes, just what is so blatantly bad about this very very popular work?
For one thing, there is that archaic poetic language in Kilmer’s use of the word “prest” when he means “pressed.” We usually excuse poets for using the shortened form because words have been pronounced differently at different times throughout history. Come on, though, this was the twentieth century: no reader was going to accidently screw up the rhyme scheme by reading “pressed” as “press-ed.” In making up his own shortened version, Kilmer wasn’t being artistic, he was just being a “look at me, I’m artistic” kind of jerk-off.
Also, he uses one of the least likable poetic techniques, anthropomorphism, which is the process of talking about things that are not human as if they were. It can be done well, like if a poet were to say that a rude bird woke her or that the sea was serene, making you aware of how alive all of nature can be. It can also, though, be as twee as calling a cat’s paws “hands,” which doesn’t stretch the imagination one iota because paws are where hands are, at the ends of arms, and they do pretty much the same thing, and, besides, you just know that a writer like that is going to go for the sympathy of calling the paws “little hands,” as if a cat with great big fat hands should be liked less. So when Kilmer mentions “leafy arms” he is not talking about any real woman, circus folk notwithstanding—he’s only implying that a tree’s branches look kinda like arms, duh, get it? And when he says that the tree—she—wears robins in her hair in the summer, it is to point out that the upper part of the tree resembles the upper part of a person and that they wear birds like we wear. . . what, head lice?
Though the “Joyce of the Rainbow Division” ribbing we’ve given him is unfair, there does seem to be some suppressed sexual obsession in the poem. Suppressed is bad—poets should always know what they’re putting out there. Did he, though? The first hint, the earth’s sweet flowing breast in line 4, is fine, a gift to the poem’s traditional target audience, second graders. But what happens when you add the fifth stanza—the tree has a bosom, now? it lives with rain—intimately? It sure sounds like Kilmer couldn’t even sit still to write twelve lines—96 syllables—without the back of his mind overflowing with “Time to get back to impregnating my wife again!”
Kilmer’s son is on record explaining that “Trees” was knocked out on the afternoon of February 2, 1913. Sometimes you learn about an enduring work of art that came into existence full-formed in one short blast and you’re amazed at the way genius can put all the elements together under pressure. “Little did they know when they went into the studio that day,” historians solemnly announce, “that they would lay down a masterpiece for the ages.” Sometimes, though, you’re left wondering, “Why’d it take even that long, even?”
The last couple of lines here are the clue. Some people can finish reading “Trees” thinking “What a sublime, thoughtful, soulful, insightful poem, and, oh wow, God’s work on the tree makes even a sublime and thoughtful poet like this one look like a fool.” But if you finish “Trees” thinking “No, bad poem are made by fools like you, Fool,” then congratulations. You may just have some taste after all.