Five Spice Poetry is a group of poets who write, publish, and perform readings in the New York City area and beyond. We have worked together for over twenty years.
 Constance Norgren |
 Patricia Markert |
 Lois Adams |
 Pui Ying Wong |
Latest Work
Haiku (2)
The water fountain
is swollen with a crown of
freshly fallen snow.
Haiku
The sound of the plow
scrapes up snow of
its swan-feathered silence.
More on Norgren’s Winning Antiwar Poetry Contest
Hello everybody….Split This Rock is a great organization/website (located in DC) that provides an ongoing, everchanging collection of peace and justice poems. They also use these poems in active protest. I am very happy to be connected with them! Connie
[from the original announcement]
Dear Friends,
Split This Rock is thrilled to announce the winners of our fourth annual poetry contest, judged by 2010 featured poet Jan Beatty.
Winners
- First Prize: “Photograph-Gaylani, Baghdad,” by Constance Norgren, Brooklyn, New York. Constance receives $500, free festival registration, and an invitation to read the winning poem at Split This Rock Poetry Festival in March 2012.
- Second Prize: “Daughter,” by Catherine Calabro, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Catherine receives $250 and free registration at the 2012 festival.
- Third Prize: “The Strap-On Speaks,” by Kendra DeColo, Nashville, Tennessee. Kendra receives $250 and free registration at the 2012 festival.
Read the winning poems here.
Congratulations, Connie! What a well-earned tribute to your poem.
For Enid, with Love, a festschrift for Enid Dame
Last night Cornelia Street Cafe had a poetry reading in honor of the publication of New York Quarterly’s book, For Enid, with Love, a Festschrift for Enid Dame. In Burt Kimmelman’s essay, “Enid Dame’s Householdry,” he explains her work:
Along with being a poet and publisher, Dame was a serious scholar of ancient Jewish texts. A great deal of her mature poetry delves into them and comes away from that delving with startling lyrics that both provide insight into Jewish roots and stake out a feminist position within the otherwise misogynistic ancient Jewish impulse. She developed a form of poetry that she called a modern-day midrash—the midrash being a comparative interpretation of Scripture. As Tsaurah Litzky has said, Dame “would often visit ancient biblical figures, and bring them breathing, vibrant, into modern life.” More than this, Dame “wrote about being a woman and being a Jew embracing a religion that does not celebrate woman as thinker.”
Enid Dame (for biography click here)
As a result of a workshop with Enid about midrash, we published an anthology, To Genesis, Five Spice Poetry’s first book. So she might be called the patron saint of Five Spice Poetry. Little did we know that shortly after September 11, 2001, when we were starting our work with her, that we were working with her toward the end of her life. In that time, under her inspiring teaching, we wrote persona poems in the voices of Eve, Noah, Cain, Tamar, and Leah.
Last night, Donald Lev, her husband, and fine poet was at the reading and read the poem, “Mike Gold and the Classics.” It was good to have the history behind Mike Gold explained. Together for many years, Donald and Enid put out Home Planet News which continues to publish works of high quality rebellion. Besides Connie Norgren and I who read our works for Enid (Connie’s entitled “You Enid Dame with Your Cloud of Beautiful Hair and Your Kindness.”), Linda Lerner, Patricia Eakins, and Corletta Joy Walker all read works in homage to Enid from the book. Patricia Eakins toward the end of the occasion read Ed Sanders’ poem for Enid, urging people to buy the book. It was a bittersweet occasion, full of palpable feelings of loss, and yet renewed faith in Enid’s importance as a poet, and in her life as an example of how to be a mensch. Here is a bit from the Sanders’ poem:
Enid Dame, friendly spirit
no longer walks with a happy smile
down the bus aisle holding bouquets of dried summer flowers
to take back to Brooklyn
Enid Dame, friendly spirit,
no longer grates fresh ginger for tea in High Falls
when we stop by to drop off bundles of the Woodstock Journal
Enid Dame, friendly spirit
no longer charts her beautiful lines
with her startling voice
Enid Dame, friendly spirit,
is freed from the tyranny of the microphone
I hope that more and more people continue to read the work of an American original, Enid Dame. To buy the festschrift, click on the link for New York Quarterly. To buy works by Enid, go to Home Planet News where two of her books are on sale.
Astaire and Rogers
He is smitten, she is not.
She’s ambitious, hot to trot,
she has other fish to fry.
He’s a normal looking guy,
sort of homely, bald on top,
sort of scrawny but can tap.
When he starts to sing that song
she just has to sing along.
Maybe he is not too bad,
is she truly being had?
Let me just remove this frown,
put more feathers in my gown.
Swinging to the sound of Gershwin,
darling playmates, leaping, spinning,
right until the final bow.
Where, oh where, are these two now?
Patricia Markert, October 24, 2010
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Butterfly of Thought in Times Square
Rosy-fingered Dawn rose from her bed—her seabed, her fishy futon—as usual this morning
By the time I was walking east on 42nd Street, she was stretching her gold-painted glam fingertips along the sidewalk
Rushing to meet my fate/ quickly braiding in and out of slower fishes on the sidewalk/ I can almost close my eyes
There are currents to carry some of us/subways, streets, elevators/to the desks/and then at night to the wine-dark bars of Chelsea
Or to the rivers swirling around Manhattan/tunneling blindly under/faithless spouses of Ithaca/a twice-daily tide
But a moment this morning we bathe in gold—I can read sentences in italic on my closed eyelids:
Stand still for a minute. One clear thought is in front of you. Don’t startle it.
SEPTEMBER
This is a singing from another time,
the underlying twitter, hum,
the chime of crickets, the cicada’s climb
and fall after the first hot slant of sun.
Their song’s a cry
to stay in tree and grass.
Their singing doesn’t stop, a sigh
felt in the bone but it will pass.
For now these million tiny bells,
this fragile, gently-shaken tambourine
charges the shimmering air and pulsing tells
of summer going and the lapsing green
that flashes, fades. All else will simply fold
back into stillness, back into the cold.
First appeared in Common Ground Review, Spring/Summer 2005
In middle age, she loses her father
Stroking the cat, filling in the puzzle,
flipping the blinker on the steering wheel to turn,
she noticed her fingers. They weren’t feminine
with tapered tips, but masculine, thick and freckled.
Short blond hairs grew between
the bend in her fingers and her knuckles.
There he was again when she woke up,
her hands folded over the blanket, and then
shampooing her hair, massaging her scalp
with his square tipped fingers. Since she knew
it was finished, their talk of the Yankees, or Andrew Jackson,
or the mayor of New York, this would have to do.
Stroking the green velvety moss at the wetlands,
she could see and use and have his hands.
Letter to K
I am not responsible for all my thoughts.
I will not explain even if I could.
Be careful how you break a large glass bowl.
Rain is rain is no more than goddamned rain.
It takes courage to return the bouquet.
No one is happy when the light goes out.
When there’s nothing left to do you can bawl.
The man on the horse vanishes in the trees.
Queens everywhere cling to their tiaras.
Heaven’s a gossamer haze. Hell is hell.
To each other we say this is enough.
Have I told you I love you I love you.
first appeared in Chiron Review, summer 2010
Accelerant
I am the solvent that feeds the flame
The foot to the floor that hurtles the car
I am the deed you want in your name
The border that sets off the civil war.
I am the heat that prickles your neck,
the pushing, the shoving, the loaded deck.
You cannot see me, I’m gas in the pipe.
Don’t fall asleep, I might kill you tonight.
Contact Us
For general questions or comments, email Five Spice Press.
You may also email us individually:
If you would like to order our books by mail, please download an order form (link opens as PDF) and send your completed form to:
Five Spice Poetry
303A 16th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11215