Val Kilmer’s world as an artist stretched far beyond his renowned leading man roles. In addition to his Hollywood stardom, where he gained fame in iconic roles like Iceman in Top Gun and Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever, the late actor’s enigmatic career included work as a both a visual artist, playwright and activist. But perhaps his least-known endeavor was as a poet.
Kilmer was a writer of poetry for much of his adult life, having begun dabbling in the form in his twenties as he studied at The Juilliard School and while his career as an actor quickly began to take off. His writing stretched into his sixties, with material touted as from the past 33 years published in 2021, and perhaps even until his death this week at 65 from pneumonia.
“Poetry is a very subjective and intimate expression,” Kilmer once said. “It’s literally your heartbeat. Your rhythm. The song of your soul. It’s super-concentrated. It’s a dense piece of yourself.”
In 1987, between the release of his two early hit Hollywood blockbusters, Top Gun and Willow, Kilmer self-published a collection of his poems entitled My Edens After Burns. The original pressing was several thousand copies. Kilmer reportedly gave it as a Christmas gift to friends and family, with what remained available for sale. According to Bookride.com, Kilmer quickly decided to buy all of the unsold copies and stored them in his garage; they remained there, but many were gradually dispersed — at one point, he handed out signed copies at a Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
Described as deeply personal, introspective, and often philosophical, the poetry Kilmer wrote reflected themes of love, mortality, spirituality, and his experiences in Hollywood. One poem in My Edens After Burns, entitled “The Pfeiffer Howls At The Moon,” is dedicated to his former girlfriend, Michelle Pfeiffer. Kilmer’s storied love life included relationships with Cher, Cindy Crawford, Angelina Jolie and his onetime wife, Joanne Whalley; these women were likely muses for Kilmer’s work.
Today, My Edens After Burns stands as a sought-after collectible, given the small number of copies in circulation and the fact that its contents are a window into the inner world of a major Hollywood star. On Amazon, a first edition of the collection is priced at $3,500. If that’s a little steep, fans of those curious about Kilmer as a poet can also pick up Cowboy Poet Outlaw Madman: Selected Poems by Val Kilmer, which distributor A24 published to accompany VAL, the 2021 documentary about the actor’s life.
That revealing documentary follows Kilmer’s battle with throat cancer and looks into the childhood death of his brother, Wesley, his marriage for eight years to Whalley and his relationship with his two children. These loved ones and challenges were huge aspects of Kilmer’s complex and multifaceted life, which undoubtedly inspired elements of his poetry, his visual art and of course, his work as one of the most acclaimed actors of his time.
