AN EXPLICATION OF KILMER'S TREES

"TREES"

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's 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.

According to cleath brooks and robert penn:

The poem has been very greatly admireed by a large number of poeple. The fact that it has been popular does not necessarily condemn it has a bad poem. But it is a bad poem

First let us look at it merely on the techincal side, especially in regard to the use kilmer makes of his imagery. Now the poet, ion the poem of twelve lines, only makes one fundamental comparisons are based.

In the “trees” this fuindamental comparison is not definitely stated but is constantly implied. The comparisonis that of the tree to a human being. If the tree is compared to a human being, the reader has a right to expect a consistent use to be made of the aspects of the human being which appear in the poem. But look at stanza two.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

Agaisnt the earht’s sweet flowing breast.

Here the tree is metaphorically treated as a sucking babe and the earth, therefore, as the mother---a perfectly good comparison that has been made for centuries—the earth as the “great mother” the “giver of life” and so forth

But the third stanza introduces a confusion

A tree that looks to God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

Here the tree is no longer a sucking babe, but, without a warning, is old enough to indulge in religious deveotions. But that is not worst part of confusion. Remember that the tree is a human being and the fist stanza the mouth of the humanbeing was a root of the tre. But now, if the branches are “leafyt arms” the tree is strangely deformed human being. The fourth and the fifth stanzas maintain the same anatomical arrangement for the tree so does the third, but they make unexpected changes: The tree that wears a “nest of robins of hair” must grown-up person, a girl, for so the associations of snowwith purity and chastity tell the reader; and pure young woman who, although vain enough to wear jewels, is yet withdrawn from the complications of human realationhips and lives alone with nature that is, rain, or might be said to be unlike, an implication made by the religious tone of the poem.

It would be quite legimate for the peot to use any one of the thoughts he wishes to convey about the tree (1. The tree as a babe nursed by a mother earth. 2 the tree as a devout person praying all day. 3. The tree as a girl with jewels in hjer hair, or 4. The tree as a chaste woman alone with nature and God) and to create a methaphor for it, but the trouble is that he tries to convey all of these features by a single basic comparison to a person.

It might be a bit shocking for us to know the true meaning of the poem “trees”. What we knew was the poem pertains to nature and how God create this beautiful nature, but we do not know behind those lovely lines lies a negative side. But for cleath brooks and robert it is just thier critic as what they see. As as leaders of the new critics cleath and brook in thier understanding poetry emphasize a careful, resourceful reading of the piece of literature itself under study, and aim to stimulate self- activity and creative controversy among readers—by thier criticism of kilmer.

This is what literary criticism is all about it changes your way of reading that the reader finds a meaning to what he reads and criticize it according to what he sees. That a beautiful pieace could turned into negative meaning.