William Bliss Carman FRSC (April 15, 1861 – June 8, 1929) was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame.

[2][3] In Canada, Carman is classed as one of the Confederation Poets, a group which also included Charles G.D. Roberts (his cousin), Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott.

[7] His literary roots run deep with an ancestry that includes a mother who was a descendant of Daniel Bliss of Concord, Massachusetts, the great-uncle of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

[3] Carman was first educated through a private tutor until 1872 due to medical issues stemmed from a severe nose injury he received at the age of four.

Afterwards, he attended the Fredericton Collegiate School where he came under the influence of headmaster George Robert Parkin,[8] who gave him a love of classical literature[9] and introduced him to the poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

[7] At Harvard he moved in a literary circle that included American poet Richard Hovey, who would become his close friend and his collaborator on the successful Vagabondia poetry series.

"Brief stints would follow with Current Literature, Cosmopolitan, The Chap-Book, and The Atlantic Monthly, but after 1895 he would be strictly a contributor to the magazines and newspapers, never an editor in any department.

"No one could have been more surprised at the tremendous popularity of these care-free celebrations (the first of the three collections went through seven rapid editions) than the young authors, Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman.

Carman and Hovey quickly found themselves with a cult following, especially among college students, who responded to the poetry's anti-materialistic themes, its celebration of individual freedom, and its glorification of comradeship.

"[3] The success of Songs of Vagabondia prompted another Boston firm, Stone & Kimball, to reissue Low Tide... and to hire Carman as the editor of its literary journal, The Chapbook.

According to Carman's roommate, Mitchell Kennerley, "On rare occasions they had intimate relations at 10 E. 16 which they always advised me of by leaving a bunch of violets — Mary Perry's favorite flower — on the pillow of my bed.

[3] Through Mrs. King's influence Carman became an advocate of 'unitrinianism,' a philosophy which "drew on the theories of François-Alexandre-Nicolas-Chéri Delsarte to develop a strategy of mind-body-spirit harmonization aimed at undoing the physical, psychological, and spiritual damage caused by urban modernity.

As well, the firm released three books based on Carman's Transcript columns, and a prose work on unitrinianism, The Making of Personality, that he'd written with Mrs.

Carman was feted at "a dinner held by the newly formed Canadian Authors' Association at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal on 28 October 1921 where he was crowned Canada's Poet Laureate with a wreath of maple leaves.

An edition of collected poetry was published only after Carman's death, due greatly to the persistence of his literary executor, Lorne Pierce.

As a student at Harvard, Carman "was heavily influenced by Royce, whose spiritualistic idealism, combined with the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, lies centrally in the background of his first major poem, "Low Tide on Grand Pré" written in the summer and winter of 1886.

"[3] Carman rose to prominence in the 1890s, a decade the poetry of which anthologist Louis Untermeyer has called marked by "a cheerless evasion, a humorous unconcern; its most representative craftsmen were, with four exceptions, the writers of light verse."

In the "October, 1912 issue of the London Poetry Review, Ezra Pound noted that he had 'greatly enjoyed The Songs of Vagabondia by Mr. Bliss Carman and the late Richard Hovey.

Whereas Low Tide on Grand Pré is elegiacal and melancholy, Songs from Vagabondia is mostly light and jaunty, while Behind the Arras is philosophical and heavy.

[citation needed] "Pan, the goat-god, traditionally associated with poetry and with the fusion of the earthly and the divine, becomes Carman's organizing symbol in the five volumes issued between 1902 and 1905" under the above title.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB) calls the series "a collection that contains many superb lyrics but, overall, evinces the dangers of a soporific aesthetic.

As a whole, though, the Pan series shows (perhaps more than any other work) the truth of Northrop Frye's 1954 observation that Carman "badly needs a skillful and sympathetic selection."

Perhaps because of the underlying concept, Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (1904) has a structure and unity that helps make it what has been called Carman's "finest volume of poetry".

It was a daunting task, as Roberts admits: "It is as if a sculptor of to-day were to set himself, with reverence, and trained craftsmanship, and studious familiarity with the spirit, technique, and atmosphere of his subject, to restore some statues of Polyclitus or Praxiteles of which he had but a broken arm, a foot, a knee, a finger upon which to build.

"Written more or less contemporaneously with the love poems in Songs of the Sea Children, the Sappho reconstructions continue the amorous theme from a feminine point of view.

[citation needed] "Next to Low Tide on Grand Pré, Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics seems to be the collection that continues to find the most favour among Carman's critics.

"Much of Carman's writing in poetry and prose during the decade preceding World War I is as repetitive as the title of Echoes from Vagabondia (1912) intimates" says the DCB.

James Cappon's comment on Far Horizons applies almost equally to the other five volumes: 'There is nothing new in its poetic quality which has the sweet sadness of age rehearsing old tunes with an art which is now very smooth though with less vivacity than it used to have.

The best of these have the same nostalgic air of melancholy and loss with which Carman began in "Low Tide...," but now even more poignant as the poet approached his own death.

[26] Carman is honored by a sculpture erected on the UNB campus in 1947, which portrays him with fellow poets Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and Francis Joseph Sherman.