Forrest Hamer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1032966 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Forrest Hamer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Forrest |
| FAMILY NAME | Hamer |
| SIGNATURE | HAMER F |
| AFFILIATIONS | San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Muse, That Slave
The author, a poet, muses on two of his poetic muses, acknowledging their location at the liminal space between inspiration and creation, as well as their role in the service of making
In Pursuit of Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis: Findings and Recommendations from the Holmes Commission
Mourning in America
A s the pandemic has deepened and the pervasive mood of uncer- tainty in the country has taken hold, we turned to a reconsideration of the problem of mourning and its vicissitudes, to what allows mourning to take place and what can impede it, both psychically and in society.This panel was held virtually in September 2021, in the wake of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.It was meant in part to be a revisiting of Freud's 1917 foundational text, "M…
Terrance Hayes Sings to His Assassin
In American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin, 2018), the poet Terrance Hayes engages the Other and otherness by addressing himself to the alterity inherent in racial violence, to the location of the assassin within the mind, and to the American sonnet as a potential site either of annihilation or vitality. Several of his many sonnets are excerpted, and Hayes’s use of the volta or turn throughout is discussed
Liberty, This Beautiful and Terrible Thing
Liberty, This Beautiful and Terrible Thing Forrest M. Hamer (bio) James Baldwin’s essay (1963/1993) was written in anticipation of the Emancipation Proclamation’s centennial. It locates itself in a tradition of living letters one generation writes to and for another; and, in particular, the tradition of one generation of slave descendants speaking to a younger one on this important anniversary—most recently exemplified in 2013 when Ta-Nehisi Coat…
Evocative Space: Where Listening Begins
Feast
Feast Forrest Hamer (bio) I was more hungry than I knew. * * * I was drawn to Callaloo first because it provided a site for the presentation and discussion of literature from throughout the African Diaspora. Some of my favorite issues of Callaloo have focused on writers and writing from places I had not visited but felt some kinship with and sense of being located in relation to—South America (especially Brazil), Puerto Rico and Haiti and various…
Racism as a Transference State: Episodes of Racial Hostility in the Psychoanalytic Context
Episodes of racial prejudice emerging in the context of a psychoanalytic therapy suggest that racism can be thought of as a regressed state of transference, characterized by polarized representations of self and other, categorical thinking, and the predominance of splitting and projection as defenses. The author suggests that activation of racial hostility in the clinical situation occurs as a result of events and processes not atypical in an ana…
Goldsboro Narratives
A Goldsboro Narrative: An Interview with Forrest Hamer
Forrest Hamer. Photo by KwanLam Wong. [End Page 1048] This interview was conducted on, May 28, 2004, at Texas A&M University (College Station), where Forrest Hamer taught in the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. ROWELL: I am beginning to wonder whether what we today conceptualize as literary poetry isn't something almost anachronistic. I am convinced that modern and contemporary poetry is arcane to most American general readers—that is, at this…
Mercy
Could be a sob, betrayed by the shotgun and my body. It was almost the last time I have fired a gun. It stayed unloaded in my father's closet while he was away, And after he returned from Vietnam, and had retired, My mother had him keep it on the back porch behind the freezer. We forgot it was there. But a few years ago, after my mother died, It became clear how far my father's mind had gone. We had to take away his car keys; keep him from gettin…
Carver: A Life in Poems (review)
Marilyn Nelson has engaged the extraordinary George Washington Carver as a biographical subject in a book which renews our appreciation of his creative legacy. Framing his life between two major American wars—the Civil War (Carver was born a slave) and World War II (he died in 1943)—she also reminds us of the social and cultural advances characterizing African-American life within the span of a century. Carver's tenure at Tuskegee, and his close …
Letter from Cuba
Forrest Hamer is a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995), his first collection of poems, won the Beatrice Hawley Award, and was followed in 2000 by Middle Ear, winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award
Guards at the Gate: Race, Resistance, and Psychic Reality
Racial difference and similarity in the treatment relationship highlight the question of what is real and apparently psychological in the different racial experiences of patients and therapists. The relationship between racial material and resistance is discussed, as well as the constancy and fluidity of race as intrapsychic content and the distinction psychoanalysts draw between social and psychic reality. Race in the mind, it is argued, is dete…
Goldsboro Narratives
Wrong (review)
Reginald Shepherd's first books introduced to us a contemporary black American poet concerned with the confounding natures of nonspecific desire, his entree in the erotic desire of a black man for godlike white men. In both Some Are Drowning and Angel, Interrupted, Shepherd turned to classical Greek and Roman myths to explore the relation between subject and object in the creation of desire, as well as to Lacanian-influenced ideas about the signi…
Some Sugar
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Assisted Living (Goldsboro Narrative #44)
Callaloo - Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2001
Suicide Prevention: Goldsboro Narrative #43
Callaloo - Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2001
Someone I Know
As he was walking by our porch, one of my aunts whispered to her sister that the man I'd never seen before had died and been brought back to life. The other aunt frowned, sucked her teeth, and warned her sister about saying such things so loud the children could hear. I couldn't be sure what I'd heard, and, since I knew not to ask, I waited for the next time the man passed by our porch
Reconciliation
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Altar
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Outside, A Man is Running Naked Through the Rain
Callaloo - Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2001
In the Middle
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) is his first collection of poems
Parable
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Guards at the Gate: Race, Resistance, and Psychic Reality
Racial difference and similarity in the treatment relationship highlight the question of what is real and apparently psychological in the different racial experiences of patients and therapists. The relationship between racial material and resistance is discussed, as well as the constancy and fluidity of race as intrapsychic content and the distinction psychoanalysts draw between social and psychic reality. Race in the mind, it is argued, is dete…
Racism as a Transference State: Episodes of Racial Hostility in the Psychoanalytic Context
Episodes of racial prejudice emerging in the context of a psychoanalytic therapy suggest that racism can be thought of as a regressed state of transference, characterized by polarized representations of self and other, categorical thinking, and the predominance of splitting and projection as defenses. The author suggests that activation of racial hostility in the clinical situation occurs as a result of events and processes not atypical in an ana…
In Pursuit of Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis: Findings and Recommendations from the Holmes Commission
Mourning in America
A s the pandemic has deepened and the pervasive mood of uncer- tainty in the country has taken hold, we turned to a reconsideration of the problem of mourning and its vicissitudes, to what allows mourning to take place and what can impede it, both psychically and in society.This panel was held virtually in September 2021, in the wake of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.It was meant in part to be a revisiting of Freud's 1917 foundational text, "M…
Liberty, This Beautiful and Terrible Thing
Liberty, This Beautiful and Terrible Thing Forrest M. Hamer (bio) James Baldwin’s essay (1963/1993) was written in anticipation of the Emancipation Proclamation’s centennial. It locates itself in a tradition of living letters one generation writes to and for another; and, in particular, the tradition of one generation of slave descendants speaking to a younger one on this important anniversary—most recently exemplified in 2013 when Ta-Nehisi Coat…
Annual Visit of the Quiet, Unmarried Son
Callaloo - Volume 23, Number 1, Winter 2000
Partial
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) is his first collection of poems
Second Telling
I could be wrong, but I think my life is half over. I think this because of a dream I had a few years ago about a house. It was my new home. Mostly. It was unfinished
Testimony
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) is his first collection of poems
Caught
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) is his first collection of poems
Goldsboro Narratives
Wrong (review)
Reginald Shepherd's first books introduced to us a contemporary black American poet concerned with the confounding natures of nonspecific desire, his entree in the erotic desire of a black man for godlike white men. In both Some Are Drowning and Angel, Interrupted, Shepherd turned to classical Greek and Roman myths to explore the relation between subject and object in the creation of desire, as well as to Lacanian-influenced ideas about the signi…
Some Sugar
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Assisted Living (Goldsboro Narrative #44)
Callaloo - Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2001
Suicide Prevention: Goldsboro Narrative #43
Callaloo - Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2001
Someone I Know
As he was walking by our porch, one of my aunts whispered to her sister that the man I'd never seen before had died and been brought back to life. The other aunt frowned, sucked her teeth, and warned her sister about saying such things so loud the children could hear. I couldn't be sure what I'd heard, and, since I knew not to ask, I waited for the next time the man passed by our porch
Reconciliation
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Altar
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Outside, A Man is Running Naked Through the Rain
Callaloo - Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2001
In the Middle
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) is his first collection of poems
Parable
Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) was his first collection of poems, followed in 2000 by Middle Ear
Guards at the Gate: Race, Resistance, and Psychic Reality
Racial difference and similarity in the treatment relationship highlight the question of what is real and apparently psychological in the different racial experiences of patients and therapists. The relationship between racial material and resistance is discussed, as well as the constancy and fluidity of race as intrapsychic content and the distinction psychoanalysts draw between social and psychic reality. Race in the mind, it is argued, is dete…
Carver: A Life in Poems (review)
Marilyn Nelson has engaged the extraordinary George Washington Carver as a biographical subject in a book which renews our appreciation of his creative legacy. Framing his life between two major American wars—the Civil War (Carver was born a slave) and World War II (he died in 1943)—she also reminds us of the social and cultural advances characterizing African-American life within the span of a century. Carver's tenure at Tuskegee, and his close …
Letter from Cuba
Forrest Hamer is a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995), his first collection of poems, won the Beatrice Hawley Award, and was followed in 2000 by Middle Ear, winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award
Goldsboro Narratives
A Goldsboro Narrative: An Interview with Forrest Hamer
Forrest Hamer. Photo by KwanLam Wong. [End Page 1048] This interview was conducted on, May 28, 2004, at Texas A&M University (College Station), where Forrest Hamer taught in the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. ROWELL: I am beginning to wonder whether what we today conceptualize as literary poetry isn't something almost anachronistic. I am convinced that modern and contemporary poetry is arcane to most American general readers—that is, at this…
Mercy
Could be a sob, betrayed by the shotgun and my body. It was almost the last time I have fired a gun. It stayed unloaded in my father's closet while he was away, And after he returned from Vietnam, and had retired, My mother had him keep it on the back porch behind the freezer. We forgot it was there. But a few years ago, after my mother died, It became clear how far my father's mind had gone. We had to take away his car keys; keep him from gettin…
Racism as a Transference State: Episodes of Racial Hostility in the Psychoanalytic Context
Episodes of racial prejudice emerging in the context of a psychoanalytic therapy suggest that racism can be thought of as a regressed state of transference, characterized by polarized representations of self and other, categorical thinking, and the predominance of splitting and projection as defenses. The author suggests that activation of racial hostility in the clinical situation occurs as a result of events and processes not atypical in an ana…
Feast
Feast Forrest Hamer (bio) I was more hungry than I knew. * * * I was drawn to Callaloo first because it provided a site for the presentation and discussion of literature from throughout the African Diaspora. Some of my favorite issues of Callaloo have focused on writers and writing from places I had not visited but felt some kinship with and sense of being located in relation to—South America (especially Brazil), Puerto Rico and Haiti and various…
Evocative Space: Where Listening Begins
Art (18 works) · History (17 works) · Literature (15 works) · Poetry (13 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Art history (8 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychoanalysis (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works)