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.”)
Hearst was born and raised on a farm just west of Cedar Falls, Iowa, in Black Hawk County. Having completed high school early,...
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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.”)
Hearst was born and raised on a farm just west of Cedar Falls, Iowa, in Black Hawk County. 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...
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