SOURCE: “Bliss Carman: A Reappraisal,” in Northern Review, Vol. 3, No. 3, February-March, 1950, pp. 2-10.

In the following essay, Pacey asserts that, while Carman's body of poetry is mostly unoriginal and of negligible quality, several of his early poems exhibit a fine mastery of mood and atmosphere. Pacey concludes that, while Carman was no great poet, he deserves recognition for such exceptional early poems as “Low Tide on Grand Pré.”

An interesting study could be made of the curve of Bliss Carman's reputation. At the height of his fame, in the first two decades of this century, he enjoyed a status higher than that ever accorded another Canadian poet. All the leading magazines, on both sides of the Atlantic, were eager to print his verse; he was generously represented in “The Oxford Book of English Verse” and acted as editor of “The Oxford Book of American Verse”; his poems were...