Saturday, February 05, 2011

"I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree"


On a February winter's day in 1913, Joyce Kilmer looked out over his wooded garden in New Jersey and wrote a now-infamous American verse: "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree." Ever since, family, friends and scholars have debated what tree the poet had in mind. Maybe he'd seen this widely published photo of an awesome oak (circa 1890) that stood in the middle of Orange Grove Avenue, safe and strong in the Golden State.

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