REVIEWS & RESPONSES

Poets & writers responses | Student Responses | reviews forthcoming

"Who do we become when brought face to face with violence? Who is the changed one that cries from its depths, "See my naked self and call me back to who I truly am"? Is the beauty of word (guiding thighs) and image (sweet as the smell of the rain polished peach) capable of reeling us in? In this current world where we question our own identities in the aftermath of violence, Jeffrey Ethan Lee’s identity papers offers a testament to the value and power of love and language to help us remember who we are. This book should be required reading.

—Linda Tomol Pennisi, author of Suddenly, Fruit and Seamless

"The title work of Jeffrey Ethan Lee’s collection, identity papers, is a tour de force, a marvelous tapestry of dialogues and voices, a successful long poem that is also riveting, tragic, and wry. With it, he explores his experience as the survivor of an act of violence like a necessary guide, a Dantesque interpreter of ruined cities, convoluted and colliding cultures, the fearfully real and volatile American night we have come to accept. For Lee, and as his verse so deftly suggests, for us as well, identity—genuine self, is the redeeming but elusive talisman."

—David N. Moolten, winner of the Samuel French Morse Prize for Plums & Ashes and author of Especially Then

Jeffrey Lee's identity papers is the psalm of the alienated, ethereal soul sung in counterpoint to the guttural cacophonies of a trash and steel world. At once dramatist, poet, and story-teller, Lee continues his important work into the ephemeral din of the modern world and consciousness. One by one, the lost of his poems are thrust into a bewildering flux, finding, as if part solace, "in each deep wound/ A star of pain." An inspiring work.

—Kathryn Winograd, Colorado Book Award winner for Air Into Breath

At the center of identity papers, Jeffrey Lee tells of a harrowing experience: being attacked by an unknown, hammer-wielding assailant in the New York City subway. The incident brings home the horror and banality of random violence. Lee’s speaker is seriously hurt, yet passersby ignore him, and the police mistake him for the perpetrator. But surrender is not part of the poet’s response. Lee shows what it means to assert one’s identity, to live with and be close to others while remaining true to oneself—a heroic undertaking for any writer in this day.

—Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Tetched and Roughhouse

In identity papers, Jeffrey Ethan Lee takes personal experience and writes about it in a moving and transformative way. His parallel-column two-voice poems are luminous and highly-original. Lee is a poet "bruised by the low road" who has found his way to a place where "vision goes beyond." This is a book to read, savor, and reread.

—Susan Terris, author of Natural Defenses & Fire is Favorable to the Dreamer

“Jeffrey Ethan Lee's new book offers a new turn on the 'identity poem.' Like Sarah Gambito's Matadora, Paolo Javier's the time at the end of this writing, or Catalina Cariaga's Cultural Evidence, Lee shows that the question of identity for Asian-Americans is fraught with violence, both metaphorical and metaphysical, and actual and brutal. It seems particularly important in the present days of endless war for us to be able to intelligently and passionately explore the sources of true and murderous rage, both our own and that of our attackers, as if our lives depended on it. They do.”

—Kazim Ali, author of The Far Mosque

Adam Fieled's Blog review is at: http://adamfieled.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_adamfieled_archive.html

Then scroll down to: Saturday, February 25, 2006,"jeffrey ethan lee's "identity papers""

"Near the outset of identity papers, Jeffrey Ethan Lee writes '—it was a fistful of night exploding in my brain' to describe his being attacked by a hammer-wielding madman. But Lee smacks us, as well, with this incandescent collection recounting, in large part, the attack and its aftermath. To narrate the unspeakably horrible, Lee gives us brilliant, evocative poetry."

—Robert Cooperman, author of The Long Black Veil