Jeffrey Ethan Lee radio interview 06/2008 on the Writers at Muhlenberg program on WMUH 91.7 Allentown with host Professor Alec Marsh
{If you don't have a fast internet connection, you may save the mp3 audio files on your computer before trying to listen to them. If you right click the audio icons and download them all in order into one file, a media player can replay them for you.}
9. Becoming conscious as an Asian-American writer, the Asian Arts Initiative of Philadelphia (influence of and involvement in). Many Mountains Moving: a literary journal of diverse contemporary voices, its wonderful founder/editor-in-chief Naomi Horii, and why MMM was created.
10. Becoming the senior poetry editor at MMM accidentally; background of MMM. Erik Nilsen, the first new director, AWP, and the MMM Press and its authors. Philosopher influences: Hwa Yol Jung, Heidegger.
11. Jung's diatactical understanding of language and Bakhtin's dialogic understanding of language. Transversality vs the idea of universality tainted by eurocentric origins. The "inter-human" as an existential idea and Buddhism. Poetics, caring and responsibility, and the absence of caring in Western aesthetics.
12. Jung and Bakhtin as influences on dialogic poetics. Becoming a poet in Allentown 02/24/1981.
13. Current and future projects, The Autobiography of Somebody Else. The "rules" in writing invisible sister. The obligation to tell the truth responsibly and the poetry of witness.
14. Intro of Sam Corbo and Amy Bauer.
15. Subvertisements for Utopia recited by Amy Bauer and Jeffrey Ethan Lee.
16. the first rain / the invisible violence recited by Amy Bauer, Sam Corbo and Jeffrey Ethan Lee. Last question and thanks.
1. Intro by Prof. Alec Marsh of Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Spring 2008 faculty member and former Muhlenberg student.
2. About the identity papers book in regards to background, the Wordsworths and trauma, and writing as recovery and the beautiful.
3. Healing through writing as an offering for readers. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and some of the values of Buddhism, writing as a gift versus as a viral contagion, the self as a fiction, out-of-body travel at thirteen, the idea of Buddha nature, meditation as a path.
4. On“Towards Euphoria,” written at an NYU retreat with Sharon Olds. Meditation and breakthroughs in writing.
5. The breakthrough of “The Sylf” in 1984 and dialogic lyric forms defined. Influence of Bach's counterpoint, The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, U2 influence on invisible sister.
6. Dialogic lyrics, the 2002 identity papers CD from Drimala Records, actress Lori-Nan Engler, percussionist Toshi Makihara. Influence of Homer.
7. Influences of Ezra Pound, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Etheridge Knight. Early friendship with Knight, and his powerful oratory style and life, and other poets influenced by Knight, including Randall Horton.
8. Knight's voice and transforming harsh experience into something beautiful. Other poets influenced by Knight: Catherine Pierce and Jabaya Dragonsun. Knight's political humor in poetry.