Fire and Ice Analysis

"THE THOUGHT FOX" analysis
"The Thought-Fox" is a poem about writing a poem, it analyses in detail the nature of literary inspiration and literary creation. The action of the poem takes place at midnight where the poet is sitting alone at his desk accompanied only by a ticking of a clock. The image evoked is one of quiet and solitude where the poet is cut off from the world ready to be transported by his literary imagination. The poet’s imagination is like a presence which disturbs the stillness of the night, the stillness of things yet unknown, and is depicted as if creeping silently upon the poet evoking a sense of stealth:

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

The night itself is of course a metaphor for the more intimate darkness of the poet’s imagination and creative inspiration that creeps silently and without warning upon the poet, “cold, delicately as the dark snow”. The mysterious nature of the stirrings of imagination is compared to the indistinct shadow of a fox that moves stealthily in the darkness of the night. The shadow in the night suggests the amorphousness and abstract nature of literary inspiration that sneaks in like a fox mysteriously and without warning. The fox seems to materialise out of the formlessness of the snow, it is a faint shadow against the snow that will take the form “of a body that is bold to come”. The image of the fox taking shape is thus equivalent to the process of creative imagination, which slowly forms itself in the dark recesses of the poet’s mind to produce a work of art:

"Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head."

The fox penetrates the deep and intimate darkness of the poet’s mind to evoke the moment when the desirable vision is attained. The poem ends as it has begun, turning in full circle.

"The window is starless still; the