Middle Ear
Forrest Hamer
Roundhouse Press
$12.50 / 56 pages / ISBN 0966669169
According to the University of Washington's Department of Otolarynology
website, the middle ear is the space between the eardrum and the inner
ear which contains three small bones called the hammer, anvil, and
stirrup. As sound strikes the eardrum, it vibrates these three bones,
amplifying the sound and transmitting it to the inner ear. The subject
of Forrest Hamer's most recent collection of poems, Middle Ear,
is that very physical space, that mediating threshold between experience
and thought, between hearing and thinking.
For Hamer, the middle ear serves as a metaphor for and gives shape
to the imagination. In many of these poems, the imagination fills
the gaps left in perception by faulty senses. In "Partial,"
a poem about being "half-deaf," he writes:
It may well be that only my mind's ear is more
tuned, what I hear there something
from without and within; sights, too; a whole world
I have been living, alongside
the one where you and I are.
The imagination stands here to serve as the organ of balance, as
the "middle." As the poems move toward realization, it is
this middle that allows understanding, even if it is, at times, opaque.
Hamer crystallizes the idea of mediation of the inner and outer worlds
in the title poem as he writes, "The inside singing and the outside
ringing and the moment crossing over breathing in." Hamer eloquently
captures this process of sensory translation over and over in these
poems, the imagination sketched in motion.
The imaginative space between words is also explored. Hamer bends
familiar language to a point where it seems both haunting and new.
The collection's first poem, "The Last Leg," begins, "When
I approach the horse hued the bluing moon, / It leans into the ground
and will not be mounted." Making a verb of the noun "blue"
suggests the way color is active, at times filling space seemingly
by its own accord. Coupled with the slow assonance of the "oo"
sound, the line takes on a lyrical haziness that pervades these poems.
In "Hearing Loss" Hamer opens up a range of interpretations
with his double use of "saving." He writes, "There
is nothing here // Saving what has been heard." This ambiguity
allows us to hear loss, to recognize how continuity depends on witness.
In "Arrival," the lovely onomatopoeia of "When Alice
and KwanLam were married, red-winged blackbirds came / from all over
the grove, making the bamboo whish" suggests a redeeming, benevolent
natural force. Hamer's use of language thwarts our expectations.
Another of Hamer's "middles" is middle age, the point from
which we can look forward and back, attempting to find some understanding
of our experience. Hamer writes in "Arrival":
I believe insight doesn't happen at once.
I believe we ready ourselves that one more time and look
differently, and change happens with small sights
which
accrete and feather.
By writing "we ready ourselves that one more time and look,"
Hamer suggests that we take an active role in the creation of our
insights. We imagine meanings for the "sights which accrete and
feather" after years of consideration. On the other hand, Hamer
presents a more ominous vision of middle age. In "In the Middle"
he writes, "I could be wrong, but I think my life is half over."
The ominous qualifier, "I think," foreshadows his statement
that, "There is now less time before death / than there is from
being conceived." Hamer does not see middle age as the end of
his life, however. The poem ends with ambiguous optimism, "The
truth is I am waiting for the next dreams. / The last one has to be
perfect." There is more to come for Hamer, the dreaming continues.
The landscape of these poems is made up of stories of being African-American
and gay, legends from Greek and biblical mythology, memories from
childhood of war, love, and community. Hamer is not afraid to find
humor in his subjects, however. In "Origins," a poem about
identity as well as the gap between thinking and hearing, he pokes
fun at a common catch phrase. He writes, "thinking / he was asking
about my sexual orientation, I told him, yes, / I am sexually oriented,
especially with some men." The poem ends, however, with more
serious lyricism: "hearing / him ask specifically where I was
coming from, I told him then / I come from wherever it is strangers
tell their lives / in ways far less specific than speaking to each
other dreams." While these poems appear to be semi-autobiographical,
Hamer's goal is inclusive — to examine the way identity, meaning
and history are created by us all.
The exploration of space and imagination in Middle Ear is
refreshing and surprising. Hamer takes us on a winding journey, akin
to the path sound travels on its way to the brain. By the end of collection,
we are right there with Hamer as he writes in the final poem, "Taking
Leave":
Turning
to go, I also know
I
can hear now.
Before
I knew this, I would say
I
couldn't,
And what a sorrow
that seemed.
