Gerald So, Editor

I started to see crime through the lens of poetry in 1993 reading Robert B. Parker novels about poet-inspired private investigator Spenser.

Crime seeped into my poetry such that I was featured in Anthony Rainone's Spring 2007 Mystery Scene article, "Raven in a Trenchcoat: Hardboiled & Noir Poetry".

And after co-publishing The Lineup annual chapbooks 2008–11, I created The Five-Two to debut new crime poetry on the Web each week, collecting fifty-two in each year's ebook, almost twice as many as a chapbook held.

Each Five-Two poem has a companion video. For poets unable to record, videos are volunteered by me or other Voices of The Five-Two.

In The Five-Two's twelfth year, Elon Musk chaotically took over Twitter, upending an important news outlet for the site, and Blogger's post editor became unreliable in the wee hours, the time I usually worked on the site. So with the end of Year 12, I ended the Poem of the Week feature.

The blog now sporadically publicizes Five-Two alumni news. Meanwhile you can keep up with me on my book review blog So Much to Talk About, my personal blog Very Much So, or on Mastodon.


ALL VOICES OF THE FIVE-TWO: