The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes

The thought fox

By Ted Hughes

The thought fox is a poem about writing a poem. The poet is sitting in a room late at night, it’s dark outside and though he can’t see anything he senses a presence:

Something else is alive

Beside the clocks loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move

This presence is in the poet’s imagination, as you find out in the very first line:

I imagine this midnight moments forest:

It immediately shows a contrast between the first two lines. The first line takes place in the ‘real world’, after the colon we enter the realm of the poet’s imagination.

The ‘presence’ is an idea stirring in the deep dark night of the poet’s mind and it is represented by a fox. This fox is in the midnight forest inside the poet’s head; therefore it is also in the study (I don’t know it is a study, I just assume so) where the poet is writing this poem. It is already alive (as is the clock, with its ticking like a heartbeat), already present, but it has no form yet. The poet’s mission is to gently coax it out of its shapelessness, and turn it into a poem.

The poet looks out of his window, a window which in this case has a double meaning. The second double colon and the fact that it is in the exact same position as the first one means that it is a window in the ‘real world’, a window in the poet’s study through which tonight he sees no stars.

The other meaning of the window is the window of his consciousness. He is looking inside to find the poem that is there, waiting to come out. Everything in the world inside his head is still dark due to the lack of stars. He doesn’t know what it is that will emerge from the darkness.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

The presence the poet has sensed is nearer than the stars, as it is right there in his own mind. Yet that makes it no clearer, only deeper within darkness as the stars shed no light on it. But something is happening to the presence:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

The presence, the formless beginning of a poem is starting to come out of hiding and into the ‘real world’. It is entering the same loneliness as the clock’s, namely the loneliness of the poet’s study. Again the colon at the end of the line means this loneliness is in the ‘real world’.

In the third stanza we finally find out that this until now nameless presence is, in fact, a fox.

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,

A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;

The blurry idea of the poem now has a shape (the shape of the fox), but all the poet sees of it so far is its nose. Noticeable about this stanza is that along with the presence of the fox, there is change in punctuation. Until now the rhythm of the poem was regular and predictable. The different punctuation depicts the scuffling, uncertain movements of the fox. The fox is sniffing to see whether or not it is safe. If it is, the rest of the body (the rest of the idea) will follow the nose. The poet must not make any sudden movements or he will scare the idea away, back into the dark.

And the fox does deem it safe, because next to emerge are its eyes.

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints in the snow

The punctuation has become even more obvious now. I can picture the fox darting around, sniffing and then dashing of again. The fox is less afraid now, though still wary. All the fox’s movements are causing little paw prints in the snow. I imagine those first neat prints in the snow are also the first few words on the ‘blank page’ where the