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.
He was the author of ten volumes of poetry: Country Men (1937, 1938, 1943), The Sun at Noon (1943), Man and His Field (1951), A Limited View (1962), A Single Focus (1967), Dry Leaves (1975), Shaken by Leaf Fall (1976), Proved by Trial (1977), Snake in the Strawberries (1979), and Landmark and Other Poems (1979).
In addition, he produced three books of prose: Bonesetter's Brawl (1979, novel co-written with Carmelita Calderwood), My Shadow Below Me (1982, an autobiography) and Time Like a Furrow: Essays (1982).
[2] 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.
After substantial expansion and redesign, the house began to function officially as the James and Meryl Hearst Center for the Arts in May 1989.