“Has a Chicken Never Chowed Down on a Fox?”: Eight Questions for Andrea Cohen
Born in 1961, Andrea Cohen grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, where she developed a love for poetry at a young age, stemming from her frequent walks with her dog through the woods where she would compose songs in her head. Currently, she teaches at Boston University and directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Over the years, she has received many awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship and Glimmer Train’s short fiction award. Many of her poems incorporate humor and philosophical ideas while other poems written by her tell a full story in just a few lines. These characteristics can be seen in some of her poetry collections, which include Nightshade, Unfathoming, and Furs Not Mine, but she is also in the process of writing another collection, Sugar, which will be released in March of 2026.
Her poems and stories have been featured in The New Yorker, The Threepenny Review, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, and her poem “A Fox and a Chicken” was included in Best American Poetry 2025.
The first time I read through “A Fox and a Chicken,” I was confused on what foxes and chickens had to do with the complexity of life. Before I discovered this poem, I always thought that poems had to be inspired by romantic things in life and carry an abstract meaning. After a few read-throughs, I began to grasp how skillfully written it was. This poem showed me that anything can be seen in a philosophical perspective and poems didn’t always have to be serious. In the case of “A Fox and a Chicken,” Andrea Cohen transformed the well-known river crossing riddle into an allegory for life. All humans have been in a situation where they’ve had to solve their problems, as one would solve a riddle, without letting their desires get in the way. Finding this poem inspired me to interview Andrea Cohen and uncover more hidden meanings behind her humorous, yet philosophical work.
I saw that you spend a lot of your time in the woods of Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Are any of your poems inspired by your frequent visits to the natural world and if so, how do you communicate the messages of the land to your readers so that they could see the natural world with as much significance as you?
You know, I don’t think of my time in the natural world as visits, but rather as where I live. And yes, I do spend a lot of time wandering the woods in Wellfleet, and by the sea there, and also in woods and streets where I live in town. A number of these poems find their way to me from these places, and if the poem works, then hopefully there will be some invitation, some resonance for the reader.
In the middle and end of “A Fox and a Chicken,” you use the word “palaver,” which carries many different meanings. Did you choose to use it for one specific reason or for the depth of possibilities? If the latter, which interpretation of those lines resonates with you the most?
The word palaver is one a dear friend has used for a long time. So it’s become a part of my language-scape. I got interested in its various meanings, all of which seemed to be at home in this poem.
I was wondering why you specifically chose to write about the fox and chicken riddle. Did you choose it because it was the riddle that fit your ideas best or did it contribute to the poem in a more meaningful way?
I never know where a poem is going, where my ideas are headed. There’s a word, or a phrase and I just take off from there. I rarely know what ideas the poem is going to work toward or through. But I do love fables and tales and this riddle feels like one of those to me.
At the end of the poem, you write about “that gathering dark,” which really intrigued me. Could you explain what the role of this line is in shaping the conclusion of that poem?
That gathering dark could suggest that larger darkness we generally try to skirt, one that’s easier to not ponder when busy with the tasks of days. But I’m not sure that I’m the right person to answer this question. A reader will decide what any line does or does not mean for them.
Has your poetry ever been influenced by experiences with colleagues or students at the universities you have taught at? If so, how have those interactions shaped your writing?
Anything and anyone and any moment can find a way into a poem. So I am sure that some conversations or interactions with students or colleagues or teachers have inspired poems––but I am not sure what particular poems those might be. And part of that is the fact that I write so much––nearly every day. And much of that inspiration comes from just walking around in the world.
In my English class, we read the article, “The Discursive Situation of Poetry” by Robert Archambeau, which is about the decreasing popularity of poetry in America. What experiences in your life have enticed you to poetry and how do you think new generations of poets and teachers can create a welcoming atmosphere to poetry for students instead of making it seem distant and inaccessible?
I have loved poetry for as long as I can remember. Reading poems. Writing them. It’s like asking me what draws me to sweets. I have a tooth for it. And for poetry, well, an ear and eye, a mouth, a soul for it. When I’m swimming or walking, often my hand is counting the beats of a line or wondering what word can go where. If I’m going down the stairs and start to stumble, at the same time I’m also wondering how, inside that falling, a poem might begin.
You can’t make anyone feel that or fall in love with that way of being. But what we can do is share poems that we’ve read and loved, poems that have opened doors for us, and may do the same for others. And the only welcome mat a poem needs is itself—which is to say, poems that matter, poems that are good, these will find their readers.
If you had to guess, what do you think the most used word in all of your poetry is and what do you think gives it such significance in your writing?
The words I guessed were love and loss. And I just did a random search of a few words in my next book, Sugar, and this is what I found:
the: 267; and: 149; you: 89; I: 63; there: 22; love 16; or: 14; someone: 13: light: 10; father: 9; life: 7; mother: 6; dark: 6; fly: 4; look: 4; wings: 3; dogs: 3; tree: 2; gods: 1; sea: 1; empty: 1; dream: 0
No surprise that the should get so many appearances––red carpet that it is. As for and, I always think that’s my favorite word, given its suggestion for more to come, of an ending not yet there. And there appears more than here, which makes sense given how the imagination goes on vacation a lot. I’d have thought that trees would make more appearances. The light is there more than the dark, though the dark is there more than wings, more than the sea. And how is it that dreams, in a book of poems, are not to be found?
I read your poem “Siblings,” and it really resonated with me because I have both an older brother and a younger brother. My interpretation of the poem was that siblings are raised under the same roof and same forms of parenting but grow up to be completely different people. Have any specific experiences with your brother influenced this poem and how did you incorporate the growth of your relationship with him into the five short lines of your poem?
I have two older brothers. It would be wrong to say that we three are like apples and oranges. More like apples and aardvarks.