Bliss Carman

Born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1861, Bliss Carman grew into one of Canada's best-known poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He studied at the University of New Brunswick and later at Edinburgh and Harvard, and he spent much of his adult life in the United States while maintaining a strong place in Canadian literary history.

Carman is often grouped with the Confederation Poets, and he became especially admired for lyrical, musical verse shaped by nature, emotion, and a reflective spiritual mood. He also worked as an essayist, journalist, and editor, and he published widely, including the well-known Songs from Vagabondia books written with Richard Hovey.

He died in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1929. Readers still return to his poetry for its flowing language, its love of landscape, and its sense of freedom and inward calm.