“I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree . . . “
The beginning of Joyce Kilmer’s famous poem, written in 1913, five years before Kilmer was killed in action as a member of the 69th Infantry Regiment. Many a student has probably memorized the poem at one time or another.
Leave it to the innovation of the Great War to include a tree and make it a tool of war.
Leave it to the armies to challenge the last stanza of Kilmer’s poem:
“Poems are made by fools like me / But only God can make a tree.”
Blair Tarr
Blair Tarr is the Museum Curator of the Kansas State Historical Society. He oversees the three-dimensional collections of the Society, but has special interests in the Civil War, Wichita-made Valentine diners, and Leavenworth's Abernathy Furniture. In the last few years he has also done a lot of cramming on The Great War. He is a past president of the Kansas Museums Association and the Civil War Round Tables of both Kansas City and Eastern Kansas. He is currently a board member of the Heritage League of Greater Kansas City.
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