Prose

Metapoetry and the Use of a Fox as a Metaphor for the Poet’s Imagination in Ted Hughes’ “The Thought-Fox” Ted Hughes (1930-1998) is well known for his nature and animal poems. In a world where “[modern man’s] self has come to be divided between his natural instincts and cultural ego” (Madhukumar 391), Hughes uses nature and animals to get rid of this division. In “The Thought-Fox” he uses the metaphor of a fox coming into view to represent the thought process of a writer struggling to find inspiration to write a poem, and that same writer eventually stumbling upon it.