James Hearst

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James Hearst (August 8, 1900 - July 27, 1983), born James Schell Hearst, was an American poet, philosopher and university professor, who was sometimes described as the "Robert Frost of the Midwest" (Alluding to this, someone once said to Frost, who was a friend of Hearst’s, that he was the "James Hearst of New England.").

Early life

James Hearst was the first child born to Charles E. Hearst and Katharine Hearst, on August 8, 1900. He was born on the family farm in Black Hawk County. His father was a farmer in rural Cedar Falls, Iowa, and a deacon in the Congregational Church. His mother was the first secretary at what is now known as the University of Northern Iowa. Hearst had three younger siblings: Robert Russell Hearst, Charles Joseph Hearst, and Helen Louise (Hearst) Speer. Having completed high school early, he started taking classes at Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls, sometimes riding horseback to campus from his family’s farm. During World War I, he volunteered for the U.S. Army and was called up in September 1918, but the war ended shortly and he was discharged by the end of the year.

On Memorial Day 1919, having returned to his family's farm, Hearst was swimming with his friends in the Cedar River. He dove off the dock into the river, not realizing that, over the winter, it had become dangerously shallow. He hit the bottom with his head, fractured his spine, and was left substantially paralyzed for the rest of his life. That moment in his life, he said, was "my nineteenth year where footsteps end". In the long process of recovering, he came up with ingenious workaround ways by which he could contribute to the operation of the farm, but, as his disability worsened, he increasingly turned to write about plants, animals, and people through the eyes of a Midwestern farmer.

Personal life

Hearst married Carmelita Calderwood, of Marion, Iowa, in 1944. They were friends for twenty years before marrying. They were married for five years when Carmelita developed cancer. She died two years later on October 9, 1951. Following the death of his first wife, Hearst married Meryl Norton on December 5, 1953.

Later life

Hearst was on the faculty at University of Northern Iowa from 1941 to 1975, during which time he held classes in the basement of his and his wife’s home at 304 West Seerley Boulevard in Cedar Falls. Following the deaths of James and Meryl Norton Hearst (in 1983 and 1987, respectively), their residence (as specified in James Hearst's will) became the property of the City of Cedar Falls "to be used as a community arts center". After substantial expansion and redesign, the house began to function officially as the James and Meryl Hearst Center for the Arts in May 1989.

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Writing career

Hearst's first published work appeared in Wallace's Farmer magazine. His work appeared in numerous publications over the years, including The Nation, Des Moines Register, Prairie Schooner, The Evening Journal, Harper's, Commonweal, North American Journal, Poetry, The Smiths, The Sparrow, The Humanist, The History of Iowa, The Iowa English Workshop, The Iowa Quarterly Review, The Inland Sea, the Civil War, and Growing Up in Iowa.

He wrote ten volumes of poetry: Country Men (1937, 1938-1943), Man and His Field (1954), A Field Perspective (1969), A Single Focus (1976), Snake in the Strawberries (1979), and Landmark and Other Poems (1979). Selected Poems (1994), The Complete Poetry of James Hearst (2001), and Planting Red Geraniums: James Hearst's Poems (2017) were two of his poetry collections published posthumously.

In addition, he wrote two books of prose: My Shadow Below Me (1982, an autobiography) and Time Like a Furrow (1982).

The North American Review, an award-winning literary magazine published at UNI, was designated as a "James Hearst Issue" in the fall 1974 issue. Hearst's poetry, a rundown of his published works, a biography of his life, and another's remarks on the importance of his writings were included in the book. Every year, the James Hearst Poetry Prize is sponsored by the same publication.

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