There's a reason readers gravitate towards this comparison: both poems discuss trees, both reflect on poetry, and both are staples in educational settings. However, "Poetry" has significantly influenced how serious critics approach the art form, while "Trees" has shaped the emotional responses of countless everyday readers. The tension between these two perspectives has never been completely resolved. These two poems represent the modernist and the sentimental, brought together in the same space, and the dialogue between them reveals much about the stakes involved in early twentieth-century American poetry.
The Reader's Atlas · Compare · The Made Thing
PoetryTrees
Put Marianne Moore's "Poetry" (1919) alongside Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" (1913), and you uncover one of the most enlightening unintentional debates in American literary history.
Poets
Marianne Moore / Joyce Kilmer
Years
1919
Chapter
The Made Thing
§01 The thesis
Poetry & Trees
A reader's case for putting these two side by side — what each carries, and what they argue when they sit on the same page.
§02 The dialectic axes
The two poems on four axes
Each axis isolates one specific vector — speaker, form, image, closing move — and reads the two poems against each other on that single dimension.
Axis
Poem A
Poetry
Marianne Moore
Poem B
Trees
Joyce Kilmer
01Speaker
Poem A · Poetry
Moore's speaker is a critic in the best way — skeptical, precise, and self-aware enough to include herself in the critique. She starts by admitting her dislike for poetry, then gradually presents her case for what might change her perspective. The speaker earns her authority by insisting on high standards for the art form instead of defending it without question.
Poem B · Trees
Kilmer's speaker is a devotee, not a critic. The 'I' in 'Trees' quickly steps back to let the tree take center stage, and the poem concludes with the speaker happily calling himself a fool. This perspective reflects a humble gratitude in the presence of creation.
02Form
Poem A · Poetry
Moore employs a syllabic free verse with stepped indentation that disrupts the page's visual flow. Lines often break mid-phrase, stanzas don’t wrap up neatly, and the syntax constantly qualifies itself. This form serves an argumentative purpose—nothing is permitted to sound final.
Poem B · Trees
Kilmer composes in strict rhyming couplets that follow a steady iambic tetrameter rhythm. This structure feels hymn-like and is easy to remember, making it ideal for recitation. Each couplet wraps up its idea neatly, lending the poem a sense of straightforward, calm conviction.
03Image
Poem A · Poetry
Moore's images are intentionally strange and grounded: a bat searching for food, elephants in motion, a wild horse rolling in the grass, a critic fidgeting like a horse disturbed by a flea. This oddity is essential — poetry should connect with what is truly alive, rather than merely being decoratively natural.
Poem B · Trees
Kilmer's images are tender and symbolic: the tree's mouth resting against the nurturing earth, a nest of robins nestled in its branches, the tree raising its leafy arms in prayer. Each image is softly focused and reverent, designed to inspire admiration rather than astonishment.
04Closing move
Poem A · Poetry
Moore concludes with a condition: if you seek both the essence of poetry and its authenticity, then you are truly interested in poetry. This is a challenge hidden within a definition. The reader must determine if they meet this criterion.
Poem B · Trees
Kilmer concludes with a humble admission: poems are created by simple people like me, but only God can create a tree. This ending preempts any criticism by acknowledging its truth upfront, placing ultimate authority in the hands of the divine instead of the poet or the reader.
§03 Synthesis & departure
The shared ground and the divergence
Shared
Both poems are brief, both were penned by American poets in the 1910s, and both focus on the natural world to explore the limits of poetry. Moore and Kilmer each present the human poet as somewhat inadequate — Moore argues that poetry is only valuable when it stops pretending to be grand, while Kilmer claims no poem can rival what God created when he made a tree. This shared sense of humility, though coming from different places, gives both poems a self-undermining quality that makes them stand out. Each poem also grapples with the idea of beauty: Moore insists that beauty must be earned through engagement with real, unglamorous things, while Kilmer finds beauty in the sacred and the natural. Both poets use animals and plants to ground their arguments. Additionally, both poems contain lines so quotable they’ve transcended their pages — Moore's "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" and Kilmer's closing couplet are among the most frequently cited lines in American poetry.
Where they diverge
The divergence starts with form before moving to philosophy. Moore's poem uses a restless, shifting free verse style with staggered indentation, and its sentence structure often loops back on itself — the form embodies the argument, refusing to settle. In contrast, Kilmer's poem consists of tidy rhyming couplets in iambic tetrameter, which are smooth and easy to memorize, with the form conveying trust instead of questioning.
Moore fills her poem with everyday details: a bat hanging upside down, a wolf beneath a tree, a baseball fan, a statistician. These represent her "real toads." Kilmer's imagery is gentle and reverent — a tree leaning its mouth toward the earth, a robin's nest tangled in its branches, and a tree in the snow gazing up at God. While Moore insists that poetry must earn its place through hard work and exactness, Kilmer willingly yields the contest to the divine. Moore concludes with a conditional challenge: you must desire the genuine to discover it. Kilmer's conclusion is one of surrender: poems are crafted by fools like me, but only God can create a tree.
§04 A reader's order of operations
Which to read first
If you found this page via "Trees" and haven't yet read Moore's "Poetry," I encourage you to check it out for its strong argument. Kilmer explains what a poem can't accomplish, while Moore lays out what it must achieve to have any real value, and her criteria are more unexpected and challenging than you might think. Be prepared for the poem to push back a bit — that tension is essential to its purpose.
On the other hand, if you arrived here through Moore and haven't read "Trees," consider it as the kind of poem Moore subtly critiques: one that is beautiful, heartfelt, and entirely comfortable with not tackling tough questions. Its merit comes from its refusal to seek validation.
§05 Reader's questions
On Poetry vs Trees, frequently asked
Answer
They aren't typically taught in the same lesson, but you can find them together in comparative literature courses and poetry survey classes that aim to contrast modernist and sentimental approaches to similar themes. This pairing has gained popularity as educators seek methods to explain the modernist shift without solely depending on abstract theory.
Answer
Kilmer's "Trees" was published in 1913 in *Poetry* magazine, making it the earlier poem by six years. Moore's "Poetry" followed in 1919, also in *Poetry* magazine — an interesting coincidence worth mentioning.
Answer
From Moore: "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" — this phrase has come to symbolize the modernist push for poetry to remain connected to reality. From Kilmer: "Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree" — this closing couplet is among the most memorized lines in American poetry.
Answer
Yes, definitely. Moore reworked the poem several times throughout her career, eventually condensing it to just three lines that focus on the main argument. However, the longer version from 1919 is the one most anthologies and classrooms feature, and that's the version included here.
Answer
Kilmer enjoyed significant popularity and respect among some groups during his lifetime, but the emerging modernist movement saw his style as outdated. His death in World War I in 1918 solidified his image as a symbol of sentiment and sacrifice rather than of literary innovation.
Answer
Many interpret it this way, and Kilmer, who converted to Catholicism, likely meant to include those spiritual themes. The image of the tree praying and referring to God as the sole creator are significant choices. However, the poem resonates with secular readers as well, serving as a straightforward celebration of nature's beauty.
Answer
'Poetry' by Moore is significantly the more challenging poem. Its syntax twists and qualifies, its references are packed with meaning, and understanding its argument calls for active engagement. In contrast, 'Trees' is crafted to be easily accessible and singable. This difference in difficulty highlights one of the key debates between the two poems.
§06 More from this chapter
Poems about the art itself
2 comparisons in this chapter