Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Vagabond Song
Bliss Carman (1861–1929)
Read by Andrea L, Betsie Bush, Christina Zhu, Esther, Ezwa, Howard Tomlinson, JemmaBlythe, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Kirsten Tomlinson, Martin Clifton · 15 chapters · 14 min
About the book
Fifteen voices, one short poem, and a season on the turn. A Vagabond Song is Bliss Carman’s celebration of autumn, a few brief stanzas in which the changing year stirs something restless and glad in the speaker. The air sharpens, the colours burn, and the road suddenly seems to call. It is the kind of poem that lingers in the mind long after its last line. Here you can hear it again and again, each time in a different voice, each reader finding a slightly different mood in the same lines. Hearing the poem fifteen times is not repetition so much as a way of walking round it, noticing what each interpretation brings out. Each version lasts under a minute, so the whole collection runs to about twelve minutes, ideal for a walk or for the first cool evening of the year.
Introduction
Bliss Carman (1861–1929) was a Canadian poet, born in New Brunswick, who became one of the best-known verse writers of his generation in North America. His poems about the seasons, the sea and the open road were widely read around the turn of the twentieth century. A Vagabond Song belongs to that body of work. Because the poem is so short, it can be absorbed in a minute, and the pleasure of the collection lies in what each voice chooses to emphasise: the colour of the season, the beat of the line or the longing at its centre.
The poem is brief, rhythmic and easy to remember, and it expresses a mood familiar to anyone who has felt the first chill of autumn. It sets the changing leaves and the sharpened light against an urge to wander, and it does so without argument or complication, relying on sound and colour rather than explanation. This collection is a multi-version recording. LibriVox volunteers prepared fifteen separate readings of the poem to mark the autumnal equinox, as part of a weekly poetry project in September 2006. Each is a different performance, so there are fifteen short chapters, about twelve minutes in all.
Listening to several readings in a row has its own charm. You begin to hear how a pause, a change of pace or a lift in the voice shifts the meaning of a line. It is a small lesson in how poetry lives in performance.
It is a lovely thing to play on an autumn day, or whenever you need a reminder that the road is still there.
Public domain
Bliss Carman died in 1929: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text