Sly artist in a fox suit approaches 45,000 poems, all off the top of his furry head

Over the past dozen years, The Poetry Fox has banged out roughly 45,000 poems on a manual typewriter, all of them composed on-the-spot, on-demand and all of them written while wearing a full-length fur suit complete with over-sized snout and jaunty tail.

He stakes out his territory most Saturdays at the Durham Farmers’ Market, where he invites all comers to give him a single word, then watch his fingers tap-tap across the keys of his 1953 Royal while the ideas bounce under his brown tufted ears.

In roughly 90 seconds, the Fox fills a page with free-form verse, which he then stamps with a red paw print and reads out loud. One at a time, his patrons walk away dazzled — clutching the prize created by a mock carnivore with a pointed muzzle.

“It’s the right animal,” said Chris Vitiello, the middle-aged dad-poet inside the suit. “The fox is seen as kind of mischievous. I’m glad it wasn’t a dragon. A monkey could work, I guess. Not an octopus.”

One word, then poetic magic

In the world of spontaneous typewriter poets — for which there is a society in New York — Vitiello stands apart as an artist who can work inside a mammal costume through a Southern summer.

And whether he’s working a wedding or on the baking asphalt of a July festival, he has honed a talent for bringing poems full circle around that single word, magically mining personal details out of his audience.

Sometimes a groomsman gives him a dirty word, so he writes a dirty poem. Sometimes a mother gives him the name of a child who has died, so he writes a mournful poem. Sometimes a kid with a lollipop gives him the word dragon, so he writes a poem about a boy who whistles out loud but the dogs won’t come.

Dragons, on the other hand ...

“I think people are a little disarmed,” Vitiello said. “They want to show themselves. Like how people talk to bartenders. If they’re carrying sorrow in them, I can see that.”

In the regular world, Vitiello works for the N.C. State University libraries. But he has a master of fine arts degree, and he’s written several books of poetry, along with some arts criticism and hockey coverage.

The fox suit arrived literally in the mail, after a relative who works in event planning found it left behind in a parking lot. She stored the discarded costume away in the attic until boxing it up one day, thinking, “I’ll give it to Chris. He likes these things.”

People love a poetic fox

He knocked around for a while, trying out the idea at arts festivals here and there until realizing, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”

Suddenly, he was getting bookings outside his normal fox den, and his tip jar was filling up with $10 bills. As a literary fox, Vitiello knows verses possess a sly power.

“People have leaned over and kissed me on the mouth,” he said in ironic sheepishness. “And done other ... things.”

At the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, Tahira Goddard, a girl in a pink jacket with a kazoo, appeared and demanded a unicorn poem. So Vitiello dropped the fox head over his human face and began tap-tapping, suddenly transformed.

“I leave the castle at sunrise ...” he began, as the girl licked a lollipop.

A small crowd gathered as his key-clacking quickened, growing louder.

“I’m off to find the unicorn,” he finishes, keys slowing for emphasis, “in some place that no one has ever found.”

He rips out the page and hands it to the girl.

“Is there more?” she asks. “She’s supposed to find them, then there’s a rainbow and a happy ending.”

“Sounds like you should write a poem,” says the Fox.

“I don’t know how to spell all that,” the girl replies, and she walks away, off to find what other treasures lie scattered around the world.