‘The Thought-Fox’ Introduction

The Thought Fox was published in Ted Hughes poetry collection "The Hawk in the
Rain" in 1957. It represents a very personal description of the experience of being
a poet in the process of writing a poem.  Ted Hughes poems have a dream-like-
quality, and most of his poems are a product of a kind of reverie. ‘The Thought
Fox’ borders on dream and fantasy being combined with reality. It appears that
the poet's dream on a cold winter night led him to write the poem "The Thought
Fox." In The Thought Fox, the poet has personified poetic inspiration as a fox. He
can perceive the fox coming to him through the forest and leaving its footprints in
the snow and its shadow behind the trees and then with a sudden leap, it enters
"the dark hole" of the poet's head. The poet in the whole poem does not deviate
from the central idea, making it compact and well-knit piece of work. The poem is
matchless in its stature and it tells us how abstract changes into concrete,
unknown become known and how instinct replaces intellect. 

Notes: ‘The Thought Fox’

“I” is the writer speaking and "The Thought Fox" is written as a first person
narration giving the effect of a dramatic monologue. There’s only one character,
thus being called a monologue. This poem is about writing a poem where Ted
Hughes personifies poetry inspiration as a fox. In an implied way, Ted Hughes is
telling us the whole process a poet undergoes while he is involved in the creative
process. The external action takes place in a room at midnight where the poet is
sitting alone at his desk. The night itself is a metaphor for the deeper and intimate
darkness of the poet’s imagination in whose depth and idea is mysteriously
stirring. The thought process has been personified as something living which is
lurking somewhere in his mind.  In the first stanza, the poet has employed the use
of hook line and intrigue to encourage the readers to discover what is in the
forest that he is talking about. His personification of the clock being lonely is
referring to his brain where his brain is also ticking with so many thoughts and
feelings but the perfect idea is missing. The enjambment technique is used from
line 2 to 4 to give an effect of controlled energy combined with vibrant passion as
he wants to write something but the immediacy of his passion is not supported by
his brain.   

The first line in the second stanza "through the window I see no star" gives the
impression that there is no star in the sky. But what the poet actually is describing
through this star is the one star which is representing the one bright spark of an
idea. Outside the night is starless, silent and totally black but the poet senses a
presence which disturbs him. The external environment is calm and peaceful but
what disturbs him is his internal world, the darkness of his imagination where
there's a stir of an idea that is surfacing in his mind’s darkness as a tiny glow. The
lines "Through deeper within darkness; Is entering the loneliness" suggests that
the idea in his mind has no clear outline but the hint of the idea he has got is frail
and vulnerable. In these lines, the poet is still grappling with the indistinct form of
his idea and to give some recognizable shape to his idea through conscious effort
and through the tools of language. There is an air of mystery brought into play
with the poet’s use of caesura at the end of ‘star’ and ‘loneliness.’   
 
In the third stanza, the coming of the idea of the poem is compared to the
movement of the fox whose body is invisible but is finding its way through the
dark forest. The image of the slow as cold, delicate and dark evokes the physical
reality of a fox's nose which is cold and damp twitching against twigs and leaves.
The brushing of the cold nose of the fox is a simile used to show the poet’s
struggle to give a distinct shape to his idea. The nose represents the outline
formed and the brushing of the nose with twigs and leaves shows that the poet is
adding elements and features into the outline that has been formed. The simile
has been inverted as the snow is shown to be as dark as a fox’s nose which is
actually corresponding to the abstract thoughts of the poet which are in a blurred
state at the moment. Gradually, the fox eyes appear out of the same blurred
vision, leading a shadowy movement of its body as it comes closer to the
forefront. The two eyes refer to the conscious and unconscious selves as the poet
is trying to remember something and to put that abstract thought into concrete
form. The repetition of the word "now" explains the hard effort as the poet is
trying to pull those thoughts out from the unconscious world. 
  
The poet’s technique of the fox setting neat prints into the snow shows that the
idea has gained shape in the form of clear words and the image of an uneven
shadow that is left on the tree trunks evokes a precise image of the fox going
around the forest in an alert and conscious manner, holding one front paw
in midair and moving like it has a limp, the fox body remains indistinct. A
silhouette gives the impression that the poet and the fox are not sure of their
path and the hollow of the body is a space within his brain where the idea is very
cautiously moving to take some concrete shape in the poet’s mind. At the end of
a stanza, the words "bold to come" are left suspended as though the fox is
pausing at the outer edges of the trees looking for a clear path just like his
imaginative process is struggling to come out of the cocoon of shadowy
thoughts.    
 
On the literal level in the fifth stanza, the fox has managed to come out of the
dark forest and it is so close there two eyes have merged into a single green glare
which grows wider and wider as the fox comes nearer, the image that is given of
the fox is someone who is intelligently focused on hunting his target. On the
metaphorical level, the phrase "an eye" suggests that the conscious and
unconscious selves of the poet have merged and the idea has come to the
conscious self as the poet is very cleverly focused in giving that idea a well-
defined shape and expanding it. In the fifth stanza, Hughes has used rhyming
words such as "widening" and "deepening" also "brilliantly" and "concentratedly"
that contains two or three and four syllables to create a threatening tone as if the
fox is ready for attack.
 
"With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox"/"It enters the dark hole of the head" these
lines give a visual imagery of the fox jumping and entering into the head of the
poet and bringing with it the hot sensual smell of its body which on a
metaphorical scale represents the excitement and power of the achieved vision as
the raw animal instinct of the fox and the originality of the thought has been intimately fused
and shaped by the intellect The third line of the stanza refers back to first and second
stanza where the window is starless and the clock is ticking for in reality, there is
no fox outside. And in the external environment nothing has changed, everything
remains the same; the only difference is that the "blank page" is now "printed".
The fox is no longer a formless being moving somewhere in the darkness of his
imagination but it has been brought out of the darkness and into full
consciousness. The fox actually stands as a metaphor for the creative process of
writing a poem, so the poem has been perfectly created as a fox being forever
captured on the page.