Introduction

This paper presents one of the most completely realised poems written by Ted Hughes, “The Thought-Fox”. This is a 20th century poem which belongs to Hughes’ first collection, “The Hawk in the Rain” (1957). The topic is poetry itself, the author wrote about how he writes poetry, he talks about the process of creating a poem.

“The Thought-Fox”

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.(1)

Analysis

This is a 24-lined poem divided in six four-line stanzas, quietly half-rhyming, and based on a four-stress line of eight or ten syllables. The last line is an exception because it has only two strong alliterative stresses.

Interpretation of the poem

Hughes is going to define and clarify what poetry is for him and which purposes he wants to reach through writing. Hughes uses a metaphor to explain the process of writing and the introspection that the author has to do before starting to write. An artist must have an idea of what he wants to transmit and how he wants to achieve it. The fox is going to guide the reader through that process.

The first two stanzas describe the situation, an obscure and suspense environment where there is something more than the human presence of the author represented by the first-person pronoun at the beginning of the poem.

The action takes place in a room at night where the poet is writing alone. Outside night is silent, dark. The night itself is a metaphor for the deeper and more intimate darkness of the poet’s imagination.(2) “Through the window I see no star: / Something more near / Though deeper within darkness / Is entering the loneliness ” (verses 5 to 8).

“Two eyes serve a movement, that now / And again now, and now, and now” (verses 11 and 12). In this passage the rhythm of the verse is broken by the punctuation and the line endings. The verse mimes the nervous, unpredictable movement of the fox, but then, stops suddenly.(3) A fox appears out of the darkness and starts moving slowly and setting “neat prints into the snow” (verse 13) until it “enters the dark hole of the head” (verse 22). So, this appearing of the fox is a metaphor of the creation of a poem. First of all we have perceptions of the fox, we know it is there but it is impossible to see it. This would correspond to the pre-writing moment when the poet is thinking about what to say and how to do it. After the first perceptions, we actually see the fox setting prints on the snow. These prints can be interpreted as words written on a paper, symbolized by the snow. Also, the hole may represent the head of the artist, his intellect.

The poem finished with “The page is printed”, which communicates the excitement of poetic creation. This sentence proves that we are talking about writing and it is not just a nice story about a fox and that closes the process of creation since the fox has completed its way and the poet has completed his.

Conclusion

In this poem it is not only interesting the literary ideas the author is trying to convey but also the way he exposes those thoughts. The main idea that we can get out of this poem is Hughes’ point of view about literature, about inspiration, that comes in the form of a fox.

“And I suppose” Ted Hughes has written, “that long after I am gone, as long as a copy of the poem exists, every time anyone reads it the fox will get up somewhere out of the darkness and come walking towards them”.(4) Don’t you feel so by reading the poem?

(1) http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-thought-fox/ (14th May)

(2) http://www.richardwebster.net/tedhughes.html (14th May)

(3) http://www.richardwebster.net/tedhughes.html (14th May)

(4) http://www.richardwebster.net/tedhughes.html (14th May)

Bibliography

- http://www.richardwebster.net/tedhughes.html (14th May) Homepage: http://www.richardwebster.net/

- http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-thought-fox/ (14th May) Homepage: http://www.poemhunter.com/

- Dennis Walder: Ted Hughes. Open University Press. Philadelphia, 1987