Identity Papers

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"I was inspired to write identity papers
after a young assailant tried to kill me
with a hammer at a subway station in
Brooklyn in August, 1994, while I was
finishing a Ph.D. at NYU. This poem
comes from the tradition of saying the
hard truth in the most direct way possible
(I think of Etheridge Knight and Ralph
Ellison as models). But our society has
grown even more vexing. I have tried
to capture how it is in language that is
lyrical yet visceral, intellectual yet brutal.
I sought to span the language from the
gutter to the research library, and to
speak about race and violence in what is,
above all, an honest account."
-- Jeffrey Ethan Lee

identity papers, a poem for two voices Hsiao-Ming (Early Morning Light) and Hong (Phoenix), features Philadelphia poet, Jeffrey Ethan Lee. Performing here with Lori-Nan Engler and international recording artist and percussionist, Toshi Makihara, identity papers is the first recording of Lee's poetry.

This spoken symphony is based on Lee's experience being assaulted with a hammer after riding the subway in NYC followed by his emotional journey through recovery. As novelist, Thaddeus Rutkowski said, "Its thrust is soft, quick, and razor-sharp."

In these days where we are continuously bombarded by images of terror and suffering, identity papers reminds us that fear, pain, ethnic hatred, hope, and recovery are still intensely personal emotions, felt by one person, one day at a time.

"...what began as an infernal poem had become for me a journey that led back out to a different kind of vision completely, a vision in which one could recognize and understand the violence of our culture yet still find a way to be whole and human again. So in the end of the poem, even in New York City or Philadelphia, where everything can (and will) go horribly wrong, love is possible again."-- from notes on identity papers by Jeffrey Lee

15 tracks in 57:06 minutes

Titles, Poetry, and Tracks:

1. out-of-body experience

2. out of the machine