Joyce Kilmer : poems, essays and letters in two volumes. Volume 1, memoirs and…

This volume gathers the memoirs and poetry of Joyce Kilmer, the American soldier-poet whose brief life ended in the Argonne in 1918. The memoirs reveal a man of deep Catholic faith, generous humor, and earnest literary ambition, charming sketches of his childhood, his family, his days teaching at Columbia, and his awakening as a poet. The poetry collects the work that made him famous, including 'Trees,' the poem that has never gone out of print since 1913. But there is more here than that single beloved lyric: war verses written with unflinching clarity, devotional poems, and tributes to friends lost in the fighting. Reading this collection is like sitting with someone who knew the war was coming and went anyway, and wrote about it with a clarity that still Startles. For anyone who loved 'Trees' and wants to meet the man who wrote it, this volume is the place.