SOURCE: “Performance,” in Bliss Carman, New York: Twayne, 1966, pp. 40-89.

In the following essay, Stephens discusses poems from Carman's Low Tide on Grand Pré, the Vagabondia series, By the Aurelian Wall, the Pipes of Pan series, and the Sappho lyrics, evaluating Carman's strengths and weaknesses as a poet. Stephens concludes that, while Carman's poetry lacks “depth,” he is undoubtedly a master at evoking a sense of place through vivid descriptions of landscape.

Bliss Carman himself was able to recognize the value and quality of his own work. In a letter to his sister, written in 1892, after a few broadsheets of his poems had been printed privately and a few verses had been published, a year before his first volume of poems came out, he said:

Old Nature lies out there in the sun, all so beautiful and fair; and poetry is what she would say if she could...