Point of View

“The Thought Fox” is written in first-person perspective; the very first word that opens the poem is the pronoun “I” (Line 1). The first stanza is intimate and deeply personal, bringing the reader close to the speaker’s emotional state. It also uses the word “my” to describe the speaker’s fingers; notably, this word is absent in later stanzas. By the end of the second stanza, the focus has shifted subtly from the speaker to the symbolic fox. They enter “the loneliness” (Line 8), rather than the speaker’s loneliness. The following four stanzas appear to be written in third person, describing action happening outside the narrator. In the last stanza, the fox “enters the dark hole of the head” (Line 22) — rather than saying my head, the speaker treats their internal creativity and inspiration as something other and external to themselves.

Language and Meaning

The poet...