Showing results by author "Maggie Hess" in All Categories

New poetry by Maggie Hess covering the range of human emotion (but not forgetting to boogie).

Some people write college essays just to turn in the required assignment, but rare students - through their passion - turn into the assignments as works of art. Five of these were actual assignments for classes in autobiography, bloomsbury, religion, peace studies, one was written just for fun during college years, and the final essay was my actual admissions essay.

So I’m stepping back from the girl who thinks of myself as meek and incapable or crazy and a quitter. I need to remember all of the power it took to start all of the things I have started. I need to remember the person who finds herself lost in the woods and finds her legs under her and walks barefoot for her own survival. 

Thirty-six poems inspired by volunteering full time with a disability nonprofit, discovery around disability and employment, weight loss and growth, and silence and nature.

These are 26 new poems by Maggie Hess muse over mud puddles, rhyme in poetry, and eyebrows.

Counting train cars is akin to counting a herd of slow moving elephants or giraffes, some creature of wildlife in the African safari certainly. But for me, there are other dimensions now that I am working for the people who drive the conductors.

The idea that language should be paired down is no joke when it comes to poetry. Syllable count varies from poet to poet and some haikus just occupy a single line, defying the convention of three. Listen to this very personal collection of haiku.

A mixed genre book of poetry, memoir, fiction, and haiku, Kintsugi 金継ぎ Walnut: 22 Years of Writing tells the story of the young adulthood of Maggie Hess. The book opens with a series of diary entries from 2001, when Maggie was traveling abroad in Costa Rica with her scientist sister, exploring the rainforest daily, and becoming a Quaker.

This book you will find split like a seed, half walnut, half pecan. Some girl might have found two husked nut bodies only to grip them tight in her fist and crack them together. Maybe you that girl, hungry for the meat of the land. Or just curious about the wonder of nature.

Lone Bird is 19 poems by Maggie Hess. This stark chapbook exposes brutal honesty in nature symbolism. Listen deeply to its poems. Bite right into the meat of it. Don't be ashamed.

Heart Whispering is a brilliant first audiobook in a series about one writer's search for more compassionate responses. Maggie Hess weaves her experiences and extensive reading that she has done on compassion to tell a story of answers.

I wanted to write a book to uplift mentally ill people of the harshest variety, schizophrenic or schizoaffective like I have. I wanted to tell the story of my own life, like some people see me. I am not a pitiable sad case. I am a hero who’s gone on adventures. Sometimes I was unstable, but that is not the purpose of my story.

This work of lyric prose is Maggie Hess' retelling of the great Japanese poem "Hojoki", only about Hess's life, instead of the Kyoto poet, Chomei. Chomei returns to river scenery where Hess draws on descriptions of birds.

A summery short story about hitchhiking, surfing, and living the alternative lifestyle.

With both clean essays and jagged diary entries, this memoir tells the story of one person's progress through disability and volunteering, self-exploration, and discovery, and snippets of growth in the contemplative writing process itself. Ultimately, the question "Can I work?" is answered with the passage of time. A challenging but uplifting piece of writing, spanning over a half a year of lyric prose with a touch of poetry.

Poet, mentor, and Berea College professor, Libby Jones once told me that everything I write is an ode. The collection of odes that makes up this chapbook has a variety of themes with a common element: mysticism. According to the Friends of Abrams Creek website, the Cherokees believed that the soul entered the afterlife by passing through the waterfall. My intent in this themed chapbook is to bring my listeners closer to the mystery the poet knows.

These 20 haikus are similar to Maggie Hess' popular other book of haiku, Breath of a Heron. The three self-portraits are studied within the haiku writing, too, as well as being evocative stand-alone artwork. Maggie Hess is known for writing simple, traditional-seeming, whimsical, nature-oriented haikus, keeping her language sparse within the confines of the poems, which adds something special.

These poems on resilience offer a durable hope for hard times. They were all written in June and July of 2020. Ranging from an ode to hackneyed poems about the moon to free verse about schizophrenic walls, these poems should at least give you something new to think about and read to get your mind off of the current pandemic. May the perspective offered in these writings help ease your suffering.

Some Contemplative Writing students have spoken about the contemplative writing process as a "river of words" or a freeing of the writing processes. Contemplation is the mental easing of something that often results in the release of more inner workings than initially expected. I find when writing becomes less of a course of nature for me, painting and letting out imagery and color can itself ease up the processes of writing. These past few years I have been deeply studying and practicing meditation, which shares something with contemplation. 

A chronology of some of Maggie Hess' most important poems over the period of over a decade. See how Hess progresses in her writing over the years.