April 2018
I taught English Renaissance literature and other subjects at UC Riverside, UC Irvine and Purdue University, and Creative Writing for twenty-five years at UC Riverside, retiring in 2009. I write mostly poetry now; I also write the very occasional short story, and, more frequently, creative nonfiction. My latest essay, “Why I Stopped Writing and How I Started Again: Poetry and the Authentic, Contingent Self” will appear in Under the Sun, Summer, 2018. In what seems like another life, I also wrote criticism, including a muckraking book on critical craziness which was published by Duke in the late 90s. It’s called King Lear and the Naked Truth, and I won’t even give you the rest of the title, which followed the once obligatory colon! I still stand by the historical research in that book!
Avis Poetica
No twitter in the tree directly outside the window through which I gaze—no bluebird, blackbird,
warbler, thrush.
I make up an inconclusive crow: clumsy, lumbering, flailing off the ground, too big for its
landing gear, landing skittishly, like a small plane, brakes on, ailerons up, up in the air again,
down, wheels bouncing.
I key in a rambunctious jay: cocky, squawking, in my face, growling, whistling, chattering,
pretending to be a hawk.
I rattle the keys, dreaming up a fractious cubist bird, beak opened on one plane, scrawny toes
curled on another, tail feathers fanned into a third. Eyecorner flicker. Wait. Something has
pushed off from a rebounding twig of the Japanese plum, with a knifetoss of glittering wings.
First published in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Issue 1, Vol. 11 (September 2010)
© 2018 Judy Kronenfeld
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