I take it you mean this one Candice and Douglas:
----------------------------
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
-----------------------------------
Remember it well??
But then I am pretty ancient now.
Roger.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Candice Ward" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 4:55 AM
Subject: Re: novels / films about poets
> Isn't it "A poem as lovely as a tree"? (Speaking as one of those
memorizing
> grade-schoolers, and a good thing too, I think now, at least when it comes
> to lyrics....) But thanks for the pointers toward _The Fighting 69th_ and
> the Davenport essay, the title of which sounds made to order--C
>
> P.S. Finally printed out _your_ "Lyric/Anti-Lyric" essay, Doug, as I find
it
> so hard to read on-screen now, and it too looks "marvelous" (more anon on
> that & this).
>
>
> on 10/20/02 10:46 AM, Douglas Barbour at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> >> The Joyce Kilmer appearance I mentioned is in The Fighting 69th (1940).
I
> >> doubt if Kilmer is known outside the US, where he is remembered for
> >> "Trees," which begins: "I think that I shall never see/ A poem
beautiful
> >> as a tree." It goes downhill from there. Kilmer died in WWI. Thereafter
> >> several generations of US schoolchildren had to memorize the poem. A
rest
> >> stop on the New Jersey Turnpike is named after him, as well as a
> >> scattering of schools.
> >
> > About which poem & poet, Guy Davenport has a marvelous essay in that
> > wondrous book, The geography of the Imagination.
> >
> > Doug
> >
> > Douglas Barbour
> > Department of English
> > University of Alberta
> > Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> > (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
> >
> > The blank page
> > as merely an interval or
> > an intrusion. We could not rescue it
> >
> > nor could we huddle, as if the page were
> > big enough.
> > Kathleen Fraser
>
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