The events of the narrative are straightforward, and the description is vivid enough for any reader to imagine it as an illustrated children’s story in their mind. Closer scrutiny reveals certain structural ambiguities and character contradictions pointing to a more complicated subtext that undermines context as key to figuring out the poem’s meaning.
Obviously, the scene that is described in this poem is a fantasy that never happened since foxes cannot converse in English. So, the first question that arises is whether one is supposed to suspend their disbelief to accept it as an imaginary conversation with an actual fox on the part of the speaker or should it be recognized solely as a writer holding a conversation with herself the way that writers often do when working out a creative idea. (The subject of mental health is not at issue here; writers often engage in conversations with themselves when working out a story.) This question is raised due to issues involving punctuation.
The entire conversation with the fox is free of quotation marks with one exception: the conversation between the speaker and the fox-hunting aficionado. That exchange is the only grammatical indication that a real conversation took place. As for the discourse between the speaker and the fox, it is presented as narrative rather than spoken dialogue, as something taking place in real-time in the speaker’s mind rather than as recollection of a conversation. The point is that even though the scene with the fox is fantasy either way, the presentation alters perception.
If presented with quotation marks, all that is required is to suspend disbelief enough to accept a talking fox. It’s like a cartoon and presents no real difficulty. As presented in the poem, however, it does not seem like a fantasy sequence inserted into a realistic narrative, but instead comes off as entirely realistic. The poet is not asking readers to actually believe that a conversation took place within the speaker and the fox, but rather that the speaker is only imagining the conversation and there may not even have been a real fox involved. In fact, this scene could very well be taking place at the desk where the speaker writes as she is typing it out on her computer. Taken to its extreme, the poem could possibly be the words that the speaker has typed out as she imagines the scene she is writing.
Then there is the matter of the contradiction which makes a simple analysis of this poem more difficult. The fox behaves toward the appearance of the speaker in a way that goes completely against its nature. As anyone familiar with the poetry of Mary Oliver can attest, behaving unnaturally is the single greatest sin that can be committed. Her body of work is a celebration of the purity of natural behavior. The fox does not run away at the sudden appearance of a human. In fact, it barely makes an effort to move at all. Within context, this makes complete sense because the speaker is presented as a human the fox not only does not view as a threat, but views as an ally in the human world.
Throughout the first half of the poem, the speaker does nothing to challenge this image of herself as a benevolent friend. To put it plainly, she seems like a nice lady. Until the fox reveals his knowledge of the conversation with the fox-hunting lady and the speaker’s reply which has made her a legendary figure in the fox world. When the fox says that news makes her “okay in my book” the speaker suddenly seems to leap right out of character and instantly angry: “Your book! That was in my book, that’s the difference between us.”
The speaker then goes on to assert, “That was in my book” without offering explanation. What was in her book, the scene describing the conversation between here and the fox-hunting lady? The speaker seems to be suggesting that the fox learned of this confrontation between her and the fox-hunting lady from a scene in a book written by the speaker. A mystery is left unresolved which creates ambiguity about the exact meaning of this poem.
Since it seems not to be intended as a fantasy conversation, but instead is clearly an interior monologue taking place completely inside the mind of the reader, it is possible the sudden change of personality in the speaker is the result of something that occurred externally. Another alternative interpretation is that the fox is pure metaphor, and the speaker is working out a conversation with something else entirely. That whole exchange from the moment the fox says she speaker is okay in his book to one word exclamation “Oh!” reveals an anger building that seems somehow connected to the act of plagiarism. The speaker’s vehemently expressed protection jealously of her own writing seems completely out of sync with everything building to that moment. The disparaging insinuation of “that’s the difference between us” is also utterly out of joint with the entire body of work of the author which celebrates nature to the point of giving animals a place a supremacy over humans.
