Carman, William Bliss

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: D. M. R. Bentley, “CARMAN, WILLIAM BLISS (Bliss Carman),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/carman_william_bliss_15E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Poet, essayist, journalist, and editor; b. 15 April 1861 in Fredericton, son of William Carman, a barrister and court official, and Sophia Mary Bliss; d. unmarried 8 June 1929 in New Canaan, Conn.
    • Bliss Carman, whose ancestors were loyalists, was educated at the Collegiate School in Fredericton, where George Robert Parkin was headmaster, and at the University of New Brunswick (ba 1881, ma 1884); he subsequently attended the University of Edinburgh (1882–83) and Harvard University (1886–87). After returning to Fredericton from Scotland in 1883, he had tried his hand at teaching, surveying, and the law, and had written reviews for the University Monthly, activities that reflected his restlessness and his journalistic bent. At Harvard, he was heavily influenced by Josiah 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. 
    • Even before his permanent removal to the United States in February 1890, Carman had begun, with the help of his cousin Charles George Douglas Roberts, to establish a reputation for himself as an accomplished and promising poet. In 1893 he published his first collection of poems, Low tide on Grand Pré: a book of lyrics, and in ensuing years his gift for lyricism resulted in over twenty more books of poetry, including the three volumes of the Vagabondia series (1894-1900) that he co-authored with the American poet and essayist Richard Hovey. Under the tutelage, first of Hovey’s companion, Henrietta Russell, and then of the woman who became a major love of his life, Mary Perry King, he 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.
    • Like other members of the “confederation” group of Canadian poets (Roberts, Archibald Lampman, William Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Frederick George Scott), Carman was lifted to fame in Canada by the wave of post-confederation nationalism and its accompanying call for a distinctive and distinguished Canadian literature. Outside the country, however, he was widely regarded not merely as a typical Canadian poet, but also as one of the most prominent American poets of the generation that was coming to maturity in the 1880s and 1890s.
    • 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, but after the war (and after a battle with tuberculosis in 1919–20), he resumed his spiritual adventurousness under the influence of theosophy and other esoteric philosophical systems. During the war Carman had worked with a group of American writers to bring the United States into the conflict and in the years that followed he renewed his ties with Canada, which rewarded his loyalty in several highly successful reading and lecturing tours (1920-29) and in various honours, including corresponding membership in the Royal Society of Canada (1925) and the society’s Lorne Pierce Medal for distinguished service to Canadian literature (1928). It was during the first of his Canadian tours that he was unofficially dubbed the poet laureate of Canada.
  • Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1282
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6998146/bliss-carman