Buggeryville

Following up on Kilmer, trees, and modernism! I'm reading George Lakoff's classic Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, and it discusses this very issue, of the naming and categorizing of trees (pp. 31-38). In particular, it points to an article by J.W.D. Dougherty which finds that, while distinguishing between "maple" and "oak" might be "natural" for the Tzeltal Mayans, it is not so natural for urban Americans, who think of both as just "trees".

Dougherty says: "[T]here is a shift in the most salient taxonomic rank of a hierarchy toward increasingly more inclusive levels as the overall salience of the domain itself declines and the taxonomic structure devolves."

But we readers of poetry already knew this. So I want to point to Kilmer embracing this urban, modern unawareness of tree distinctions, an inability or disinclination to thinking of "oak" as a "natural" category -- to think of cats as "mammals" rather than "cats", perhaps? -- and also perhaps suggest this as part of the poem's popular appeal. It will not get bogged down in the distinctions of yesterday! He will strive to invent a cloying sentimality for the twentieth century, for the pre-World War I optimism of the future, today!