Bliss Carman

Bliss Carman , 1861-1929, Canadian poet, b. Fredericton, N.B. He studied at the universities of New Brunswick and Edinburgh and at Harvard. While at Harvard (1886-88) he began a friendship with Richard Hovey that later resulted in their joint publication of the series Songs from Vagabondia (1894, 1896, 1901). Carman's poetry is emotional, optimistic, and impressionistic, filled with vivid, sensuous imagery. Among his numerous volumes of verse are Behind the Arras (1895), the series Pipes of Pan (1902-5), and Echoes from Vagabondia (1912). The best of these and other poems are collected in Later Poems (1921) and Ballads and Lyrics (1923). His Talks on Poetry and Life, lectures on Canadian literature, was published in 1926.

Bibliography: See letters, edited by H. P. Gundy (1981); study by D. Stephens (1966).

Carman, [William] Bliss (1861–1929), Canadian‐born poet, after 1888 made his home in New York and Connecticut. He edited The Chap‐Book and published his first notable poetry in Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics (1893), whose youthful buoyancy and pagan love of nature won it immediate success. In collaboration with Richard Hovey he wrote Songs from Vagabondia (1894), which, being marked by a carefree gypsy spirit, helped to initiate a revolt against the scholarly and anemic poetry of the time. The collaboration was continued in More Songs from Vagabondia (1896) and Last Songs from Vagabondia (1901). In his more than 20 subsequent volumes, Carman retained his spontaneity in simple lyrics, although he was occasionally so captivated by rhythm and symbolism that his work contains an undue use of verbal music and coloring. The range of his verse is beyond nationalism, although Canada claimed him as unofficial poet laureate. His later books include Behind the Arras: A Book of the Unseen (1895); Ballads of Lost Haven: A Book of the Sea (1897); Sappho (1904), an imaginative reconstruction of one hundred fragments from the Greek poet; Pipes of Pan (1906); Echoes from Vagabondia (1912); The Rough Riders and Other Poems (1909); April Airs: A Book of New England Lyrics (1916); and Wild Garden (1929). He also wrote essays on The Friendship of Art (1904), The Making of Personality (1908), and The Kinship of Nature (1913).