Dear Max

Dear Max: Letters to Wake a Resting Poet is a work of creative non-fiction inspired by the famous prose poem “DESIDERATA” (Max Ehrmann, 1872-1945). Presented as a series of letters by Stephen Ashton in response to 40 poems by Max Ehrmann, Dear Max explores the inner-workings and potential of writing. 

Great motivational writing can reach deep into the desires of our spirit. Max Ehrmann’s famous poem, “DESIDERATA,” reminds us of self-evident truths that energize our better selves. Poster versions of “DESIDERATA” helped inspire the 1967 Summer of Love and anti-war sentiments that ended the Vietnam War. And just years earlier, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s affinity with “DESIDERATA” may have helped him de-escalate the Cuban Missile Crisis, saving the world from nuclear holocaust.

Dear Max: Letters to Wake a Resting Poet began as a thank-you letter to Max Ehrmann, the deceased author of “DESIDERATA.” Soon after, Stephen Ashton found an archive of Ehrmann’s earlier work, and one poem resonated as a reply to this letter. Others of these earlier poems either aligned with or contradicted “DESIDERATA,” and Stephen saw them as intriguing trail markers of Max’s spiritual odyssey.

So began an imaginary conversation across time. Dear Max is an exploration of a poet’s inner world. Presented as a serialized response to a curated selection of Max Ehrmann’s poems, Letters to Wake a Resting Poet reveals the “who, why and how” that awakens our own inner poets to their most crucial role: ambassadors to worlds that might be lost without them.