The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes

We find The Thought Fox (1957) in the collection of poems The Hawk in the Rain.

The poem is made up by six quatrains. It talks about a fox imagined by the writer while he is writing. So the fox stands for imagination: just considering the title we understand that the fox is only an imagine in the poet’s mind. The animal is the poem that has been written, it’s inspiration. As a matter of fact the actions made by the fox refer to the act of poetic creation “Two eyes serve a moment, that now and again…now - sets neat prints into the snow (the neat prints are the pen of the writer that is writing (sets) in a white paper (snow)) – warily a lame (just like the writer, the fox is laming) shadow lags (both the writer and the fox, go on very slowly) – across clearings, an eye, a widening…business (the poem is brilliantly and concentratedly going on)”. At the beginning of the poem we don’t understand what the poet is seeing in his mind, what his creativity is showing him (“something else is alive”, “something more near…is entering the darkness”). The writer tells us what he is imagining only in the third quatrain (“a fox nose touches twig”). But why did Hughes choose a fox? Probably because foxes are very quite, their preys see them only when they are going to attack, just like writing a poem: you go on thinking what to write very slowly, you don’t know how long it’s going to take, you choose the right moment to start but when your instinct tells you to start, you attack and it’s done. In conclusion this poem wants to tell us that we trust too much intelligence and reason and that we should use more our instinct.

Who is Ted Hughes?

Since he was a child, Ted Hughes (Yorkshire, 1930 – 1998) appreciated the animal world and its never-ending struggle for survival. He attended Cambridge University. In 1956 he married Sylvia Path, which committed suicide in 1963. He remarried in 1970 and spent much time in Devon. In 1984 he was made Poet Laureate.

His Books - The Hawk in the Rain (1957), Lupercal (1960) Wodwo (1967) and Crow (1970)  the main topic of these book is nature; - Remains of Elmet (1979), Elmet (1994), River (1983)  illustrated by photographs - The Cat and the Cuckoo (1988), Wolfwatching (1989), Rain-Charm for the Duchy (1992), Birthday Letters (1998)  poems are often private conversations with Sylvia Path