Mahwah Society Finds 3 Unpublished Joyce Kilmer Poems

Months after the Joyce Kilmer Society of Mahwah found proof that the poet’s famed work ‘Trees’ was penned in the township, members of the group have unearthed three of his unpublished works.

According to a release from the Society this week, it recently worked with a website that publishes rare historical documents to find three poems apparently written during Kilmer’s early years as a poet. The poems were previously found by the unnamed site, the Society said.

The Society published excerpts from the poems, which had cross-outs and corrections on them, is its monthly newsletter’s March edition.

"This is an exciting discovery by our Society which casts new and intriguing light on the early career of this notable American poet patriot who composed much of his most-acclaimed writing during his five-year residency in Mahwah a Century ago," Society Founder Alex Michelini said.

Though Michelini said he does not yet want to publish the documents in their entirety, or reveal the name of the site that located them, he did release the following information about each of the three poems:

• One of the poems, the subject of which was the time of a day, was written on the back of a Route Sheet of Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical company centered in New Brunswick, NJ, for which Joyce Kilmer's father, Frederick Barnett Kilmer, was the first Scientific Director. Joyce helped his father write J&J's First Aid Manual before launching his fulltime poetry career.
• Another poem, about an outdoor public place, was written on the front side of a single page of lined paper in a writing pad. There were many changes, cross-outs and corrections. Lower on this page, Kilmer wrote four words apparently trying to rhyme some words.
• The third poem, describing the city of London, was written on the back side of the sheet containing the previous poem. At the bottom, Kilmer wrote a question to himself about the wording.