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Kilmer died a soldier in WWI. I vaguely remember a film--must have been 30s or 40s Hollywood--in which he's featured as a rather lachrymose girlie-man of a soldier--the popular idea of male poets at the time. Mark At 05:53 PM 2/13/2006, you wrote: >Mark Weiss wrote: > >>Here's an aspect of meter that we never covered during any of the >>past donnybrooks: its usefulness for marching. No army ever >>advanced to free verse. So, earlier today, as I slogged through the >>day-old snow in the improbable forest that borders my lodgings, I >>realized that I was keeping cadence by humming, over and over, "I >>think that I shall never see-ee-ee/ a pome beauteeful as a >>tree-ee-ee." Curse you, Joyce Kilmer! >> >>Mark > >Desultory comments--my office was shut down today. > >Marching verse. "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold and >his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold." Nice beat but can >you dance to it? > >Or this-- > > "Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard. > And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred. > He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there > But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, > Bess, the landlord's daughter, > Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair." > >Actually that's less of a marching tune than the Byron, Noyes was >really going for it and it's way more sophisticated than I >remembered, considering I haven't read it since high school. "The >Highwayman" is as hammy as hell and was turned into an appropriately >hammy movie in 1951. >Dan O'Herlihy who I recall had some swash and buckle. Would've been >a perfect role for Flynn. > >My equivalent: coming out of a concert or opera humming a >tune. Unless you're James Levine, you can't come out of the opera >whistling passages from Lulu or Satyagraha ></html/compositions/satyagraha.html> either (actually with some >Glass like "Contrary Motion" you've got a prayer because it keeps >looping). For that matter try whistling some Bartok, Duke >Bluebeard's Castle. People will look at you funny. > >Joyce Kilmer has more stuff in New Jersey named after him than half >a dozen former Governors. That tells you the level of politics in >this state. He was born in New Brunswick and graduated from >Rutgers. He has a school named after him (at least one) and a rest >stop on the Jersey Turnpike. There's a memorial forest in North >Carolina named for him' God knows why it's in N.C. except maybe it >was in Jersey and was paved over to put up a parking lot. >In grammar school, where I didn't learn any, we had to sing "Trees." >Every time we got to the word "breast" we all sniggered. I just >went back and read the poem. It's every bit as bad as I >remembered. The Old Formalism, perhaps? *I* deserve stuff named >after me, only my stuff doesn't rhyme and when I say "breast" it's >not going to get a laugh out of anyone. I hope. > >Ken > >-- >------------------- >Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com rainermaria.typepad.com >"This is the best of all possible worlds only because it is the only > one that showed up, said father." -- Russell Edson