It’s the birthday of journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918, #diedtooyoung), best known for a single poem, “Trees” (1913), which begins, “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.” His memory also lives on in the Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest held every year at Columbia University, Kilmer’s alma mater. (Just think about *that* before you consider going to Columbia.)

Kilmer was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and went to Rutgers College from 1904 to 1906, then transferred to Columbia, graduating in 1908. He married Aline Murray and they eventually had five children. Kilmer began teaching and writing poems, essays, and book reviews; he also worked for several years defining words for The Standard Dictionary (1912). He published his first collection of poems, Summer of Love, in 1911. His poems first showed the influence of Yeats and other Irish poets, but after Kilmer converted to Catholicism in 1913 he strove to emulate the Metaphysical poets instead. When “Trees” was published in Poetry magazine, Kilmer became extremely popular. By then he was writing for the New York Times Review of Books and New York Times Sunday Magazine, and he began lecturing as well.

When the U.S. joined WWI, Kilmer voluntarily enlisted and at his own request joined the infantry and was sent to Europe, where he was killed in the Battle of Ourcq by a sniper’s bullet; France awarded him the Croix de Guerre posthumously. He was only 31 at the time of his death. “Trees” continues to be a popular poem today in spite of critics disparaging it as sappy and sentimental.

This year’s Alfred Joyce Kilmer etc. Contest was won by freshman and first-time poet Dylan Temel for his poem “A Story of Unrequited Love in 5 Haikus,” which begins:

Your pith in my nails

As I peel you, stinging juice

Squirts into my soul…

Temel was one of more than 30 Columbia students who entered the contest, which was judged by a panel of three professors. (Read about it here.)

You could do worse, actually, than give in to a smidge of sentimentality this good Thursday as you stay scrupulously honest to the data.