Imaginary Forests with Real Foxes in Them
Imaginary Forests with Real Foxes in Them

Summary/Abstract: Under a title unerringly reminiscent of Marianne Moore’s modernist manifesto in “Poetry” (1921) ‒ good, real modern poets should give us “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”‒, this paper follows the journey or quest of the fox (particularly Vulpes vulpes) from Aesop (tentatively) to the “fox poems” of Mark Jarman, Lucille Clifton, Philip Levine, John Clare, Kenneth Patchen, W.S. Merwin, Mary Oliver, Rita Dove, Adrienne Rich, Ted Hughes (whose “Thought-Fox” may have been the starting point ‒ “I imagine this… forest…” ‒ of our own quest) and Brendan Kennelly; a journey that takes us from the image of the real animal, its many lives and deaths (metempsychosis is evoked), to that of dreams, thoughts, and poems embodying it (or simply mentioning it). The succession of authors and poems is not chronological, but rather as required by the various stages of this fictional journey.

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