Joyce Kilmer

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) was an American poet, journalist and critic, born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and educated at Rutgers College and Columbia University, where he graduated in 1908. He worked as a teacher, a lexicographer's assistant at Funk and Wagnalls, literary editor of The Churchman, and a member of the staff of the New York Times. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1913, and his faith colours much of his later verse.

Trees and Other Poems (1914), his best-known volume, contains the brief lyric "Trees", first published in Poetry magazine in 1913 and among the most widely recited American poems of the century. Kilmer enlisted in the New York National Guard in 1917, served in France with the 165th Infantry (the "Fighting 69th"), and was killed by a sniper's bullet at the second battle of the Marne on 30 July 1918, aged 31. A second collection, Main Street and Other Poems, appeared in 1917.