False Notions, Fears, And Other Things Of Wood Comments

This one bears rereading. I don't know why he titled it False Notions, Fears, and Other Things of Wood instead of The Chopping Block, which the poem seems to be about. I had to read twice before I realized that the sturdy stump was his mental chopping block, not a metaphor for some emotion. I think the axe is blinding both because it reflects the sun and because it blinds him to the sight of the false notions and fears that he destroys. The most interesting line is till I confirm the arm is mine. He doesn't want to destroy a fear or notion just because somebody else told him it was wrong. He has to be sure that it's his own judgment that condemns the thought, that his reason for destroying it is his alone and that he fully understands it, that he's not just blindly following the herd or letting someone else do his thought-pruning for him. Much of the rest is still a mystery to me. Why does he call the false notions and fears by the awkward neologism woodthings, instead of wooden things or things of wood, as in the title? Why do they seem to be alive, even trying to wrench away, but he still says they come from no wilderness or living tree?