Carman, Bliss

Carman, Bliss (kär`mən), 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).