Modern American Poetry (1919). Journalist and author Mark Forsyth ranks the first two lines of "Trees" as 26th out of 50 lines in an assessment of the "most quoted lines of poetry" as measured by Google hits. Popular appeal With "Trees", Kilmer was said to have "rediscovered simplicity", and the simplicity of its message and delivery is a source of its appeal. In 1962, English professor Barbara Garlitz recounted that her undergraduate students considered the poem as "one of the finest poems ever written, or at least a very good one"—even after its technical flaws were discussed—because of its simple message and that it "paints such lovely pictures". The students pointed to "how true the poem is", and it appealed to both her students' "romantic attitude towards nature" and their appreciation of life, nature, solace, and beauty because of its message that "the works of God completely overshadow our own feeble attempts at creation". Considering this sentiment, the enduring popularity of "Trees" is evinced by its association with annual Arbor Day observances and the planting of memorial trees as well as the several parks named in honor of Kilmer, including the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness and Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest tracts within the Nantahala National Forest in Graham County, North Carolina.Brewer, Alberta, and Brewer, Carson. Valley So Wild. (Knoxville, Tennessee: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1975), 350-351. "Trees" has been described by literary critic Guy Davenport as "the one poem known by practically everybody". According to journalist Rick Hampson, "Trees" was "memorized and recited by generations of students ... It comforted troops in the trenches of World War I. It was set to music and set in stone, declaimed in opera houses and vaudeville theaters, intoned at ceremonies each April on Arbor Day." According to Robert Holliday, Kilmer's friend and editor, "Trees" speaks "with authentic song to the simplest of hearts". Holliday added that this "exquisite title poem now so universally known made his reputation more than all the rest he had written put together" and was "made for immediate widespread popularity". Critical reception Several critics—including both Kilmer's contemporaries and modern scholars—have disparaged Kilmer's work as being too religious, simple, and overly sentimental and suggested that his style was far too traditional, even archaic. Poet Conrad Aiken, a contemporary of Kilmer, lambasted his work as being unoriginal—merely "imitative with a sentimental bias" and "trotting out of the same faint passions, the same