Foxed by thought

Ms P and Mr R have got me thinking about my theory of good writing. My problem is, I don’t have one.

I understand the idea that there is bad writing and I certainly know the experience of reading writing which is good, but I’ve never really been comfortable with the idea of being able to define it. I am, in this instance, a relativist, which means that I don’t believe that there is any such thing as “perfect” writing nor that there is some way of making irrefutable judgements about the quality of writing.

I’m not sure if my students should be pleased by this declaration or not. On the one hand, I don’t claim to have the knowledge to make final judgements about their writing so they can feel more comfortable to explore and experiment without fear of too harsh a judgement. On the other hand, they don’t have a teacher who feels able to point them towards perfection with any degree of confidence.

Whilst I appreciate that writing is a discipline and that there are very definitely practices that help produce the final product effectively and efficiently, I’m not sure that the real poetry of writing can be achieved solely through discipline. There is something in the best writing which is beyond words: a paradoxical special ingredient that somehow evaporates if you try to take the lid off and define it in a classroom.  The best I think I’ve ever been able to do is put it in front of my students and hope for a little osmosis.

So, below, I offer a little bit of magic. This is Ted Hughes’ description of the act of writing poetry depicted, appropriately, through metaphor. My favourite line in this poem is the first line of the last stanza. A masterpiece of descriptive writing – but I can’t, exactly, tell you why.

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment's forest: 
Something else is alive 
Beside the clock's loneliness 
And this blank page where my fingers move. 

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

Cold, delicately as the dark snow 
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf; 
Two eyes serve a movement, that now 
And again now, and now, and now 

Sets neat prints into the snow 
Between trees, and warily a lame 
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow 
Of a body that is bold to come 

Across clearings, an eye, 
A widening deepening greenness, 
Brilliantly, concentratedly, 
Coming about its own business 

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox 
It enters the dark hole of the head. 
The window is starless still; the clock ticks, 
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes