Fox by Alice Oswald
It’s National Poetry Day today and in celebration, here is Fox by Alice Oswald, who is fast becoming one of my favourite poets. The last stanza of this poem is so beautiful. Enjoy!
Fox
I heard a cough
as if a thief was there
outside my sleep
a sharp intake of air
a fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
barked at my house
just so abrupt and odd
the way she went
hungrily asking
in the heart’s thick accent
in such serious sleepless
trespass she came
a woman with a man’s voice
but no name
as if to say: it’s midnight
and my life
is laid beneath my children
like gold leaf
#nationalpoetryday
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And all in one breathless sentence, too.
Lovely work. Yes, very, and increasingly so, impressed with her writing. I love the risks and rules bent: the repetitions in Memorial – and this one.
I have become rather sick and tired of the current stale,English orthodoxy. She comes in with her own authority.
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I’m really just discovering her Michael, as I am hoping to book her to read at HomePlace next year. I love her imagery.
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Beautiful!
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Isn’t it? 😍
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That’s lovely – thank you for sharing it. We have a fox locally who visits us and who we leave food out for – we have nicknamed it, rather predictably, Foxy McFoxface and our local deer is Deery McDeerface!
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Those names are perfect!
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That is beautiful! Thank you for sharing.
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Lovely! Thanks for sharing 🙂
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I love how she transitioned from the viewpoint of the woman who hears the fox to the thoughts of the fox herself.
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Yes, that’s what I like too.
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That’s beautiful! I never read anything by her. I’ll be adding Oswald to my TBR now 🙂
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