Top Highlights

• writing requires patience, concentration, instinct, and a bit of luck.
• writing is a kind of waiting game. Creativity and inspiration might work in mysterious ways, but they can’t work their magic at all, the poem suggests, if the creator doesn’t sit down and eliminate distractions!
• creative inspiration is a mysterious force
• The speaker's vivid description of the fox, with its delicate movements and attentiveness to its surroundings, echoes the creative process.
• Through concentration and a kind of trust in the unconscious mind, a poem, like a fox, can just go “about its own business”—until suddenly it pounces.

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