July 30, 1918: Joyce Kilmer Dies In Combat

July 30, 1918: Joyce Kilmer dies while serving his country in World War I. He was 31 years old.

Ever since, his death has been noted as the end of a great career in poetry.

It wasn't.

Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born on December 6, 1886 -- the same month as painter Diego Rivera, actor Victor McLaglen, and baseball legend Ty Cobb, and 5 days before the 1st match played by the soccer team that would become Arsenal Football Club -- in New Brunswick, Middlesex County, New Jersey. The house in which he was born had the address of 17 Codwise Avenue. The street was later renamed Joyce Kilmer Avenue.

His father, Dr. Frederick Barnett Kilmer, worked in New Brunswick for pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, and invented perhaps their most famous product, their baby powder. He named his son after Alfred R. Taylor and Dr. Elisha Brooks Joyce, the curate and the rector, respectively, of Christ Church, an Episcopal Church in New Brunswick. Dr. Joyce baptized the baby. And how did the boy thank his father and these 2 priests? In 1913, he converted to the Roman Catholic Church.

He went to Rutgers Preparatory School (since relocated up Easton Avenue in Franklin, Somerset County) and Rutgers College (now part of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey), where he edited the student newspaper, The Daily Targum. ("Targum" is an Aramaic word meaning "interpretation.") But he couldn't handle the overall curriculum at Rutgers, and, on his mother's advice, transferred to Columbia University in New York, from which he graduated in 1908, and where he again edited the paper, The Columbia Spectator.

He taught at Morristown High School, then edited a dictionary for Funk & Wagnalls, while his poetry began to be published. In 1912, he was hired as a "special writer" by The New York Review of Books, and bought a house in Mahwah, Bergen County, New Jersey. The house was surrounded by trees, inspiring him to write the poem "Trees," which was published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in August 1913:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Literary critic Guy Davenport wrote that it is "the one poem known by practically everybody." Sure, because it's simple. Even simplistic. It looks like it could have been written by a child. (Kilmer was 26 years old.) Or even, as Kilmer himself admitted, a fool.

In 1917, with the American entry into World War I, Kilmer enlisted in the New York National Guard. He was assigned to the mostly-Irish 69th New York Infantry Regiment, later immortalized in the James Cagney film The Fighting 69th. Though he was a college graduate, and thus eligible for a commission as an officer, and was often recommended for such posts during the course of the war, he refused, stating that he would rather be a Sergeant in the Fighting 69th than an officer in any other regiment.

Before he was sent to France, he signed a contract to write poems about the war. One was "Rouge Bouquet," a tribute to 19 friends lost in a German artillery attack on March 7, 1918. In a war in which many finer poets served, it wasn't much better than "Trees." And if you can name a Kilmer poem other than those two, then you're one up on me.

His courage was greater than his writing skill: He volunteered for intelligence duty, and his comrades in arms developed great respect for him. On July 30, 1918, he volunteered to accompany Major "Wild" Bill Donovan to lead an attack as part of the Second Battle of the Marne. Donovan would go on to found the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA.

He led a scouting party in search of a German machine gun, near Muercy Farm, beside the Ourcq River, near the village of Seringes-et-Nesles. He was found with a bullet in his head. The French Republic posthumously awarded him their highest honor, the Croix de Guerre.

Kilmer was buried in a battlefield cemetery in France, while a cenotaph in his honor is in the family plot in New Brunswick. The American Legion post in nearby Milltown is named for him. He left behind a wife, fellow poet Aline Murray; and 5 children, 3 of whom lived to adulthood, one living until 1999. Had that bullet flown a few inches in either direction, and he'd lived a full life, he would have been alive in the 1960s, but would his poetry have gotten any better?

God decides who lives and who dies, but who is determined to be a great poet is made by fools like you and me. Joyce Kilmer was a hero, and a man of strong character. But he was a man of weak poetic skill, and it's time we admitted it, in spite of his heroism.

*

July 30, 1918 was a Tuesday. These 5 baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 3-0 at Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Bernie Boland pitched a 4-hit shutout, outpitching Edward "Slim" Love. Ty Cobb didn't start the game, but pinch-hit, and went 2-for-2 with 3 RBIs.

* The Cleveland Indians swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Athletics, 4-2 and 5-1 at League Park in Cleveland. Tris Speaker went 0-for-3 in the opener, but 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs in the nightcap.

* The Washington Senators beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-0 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Jim Shaw pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Eddie Cicotte.

* And the Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 11-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Babe Ruth went 3-for-4 with a walk and an RBI, but no home runs.