1. The Field’s chow, Whym, died in 1906, and this poem was published by Katherine after Edith’s death, in 1914. Can you find evidence that parts of the poem were likely added later?
2. What is the significance of the title, “Whym Chow: Flame of Love”? The epigraph?
3. Who seems to be the sequence’s principal speaker? Or can you tell?
4. What are some of the many ways religion is used in the poem? Which strands of religion seem to be represented? (pagan, Christian) How do these complement (or oppose) one another? (examples include nos. 2, 5, 21)
5. Are Christian ways of thought emphasized above other religious expressions, and if so, what kind of Christianity is evoked? What effect does this have on the poem’s symbolism? (evocation of eucharist cup, appeal to transcendence, notions of advent and sacrifice)
6. What is added by the poem’s appeals to Dionysius and pagan rites? (celebration of life force)
7. Does the sequence have a progression or convey a narrative, and if so, of what? Does the questing speaker achieve any form of closure?
8. Does this poem remind you of other elegies or works of literature you have read? (compare Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”)
9. What features of a chow dog are alluded to in the sequence? (his red hair, his bright eyes, his curved legs, his dance of happiness when Edith and Katherine return after an absence, his eagerness to greet Edith)
10. Is it significant that the sequence has 30 poems, marked as XXX?
11. Do the titles which preface some of the poems help in understanding the sequence?
12. Why is the chow, and his memory, so important to the speaker? What had he embodied for these two women? (unquestioning love and acceptance of their union)
13. What final prayer is made by the speaker of the sequence? (prays for dog to represent her lost love in the spiritual realm despite lapse in time--he will continue to intercede for and join the two women through is greater connection to a world of nature)
14. What use is made of shifts in meter, stanza form and length throughout the sequence? Are these variations more appropriate than the use of a regular form as in a sonnet sequence?
15. Is this a good poetic sequence? Why or why not? Is it successful in merging earlier poetic conventions with original and new themes?
16. In what way does the Field’s sequence reflect intellectual currents of their time? (concern for animals as expressed in the anti-vivisection movement; eclecticism in religious thought; evolutionary science and its respect for human forbears; modernist experimentation with poetic forms)
Individual Poems:
Poem 1--Requiescat--Why can the little chow not be found in the halls of suffering? What are these halls? (Hades) What is the significance of his departure?
What are some allusions latent in the line, “Forth, Forth! Away! He is not of these Halls--"? [biblical account of resurrection; Milton's "Lycidas"]
Poem 2--Indroit--What startling event opens the poem? In what form has the dog reappeared, and who has brought him thus?
Poem 3--What radical difference has altered his appearance? What is significant about the fact that they may not touch him? (“Nolo me tangere”)
Poem 5--Trinity--What are features of the poem’s form? What is its meaning?
With what supernatural being is the dog contrasted? (Holy Spirit) Why this choice among others? (Holy Spirit is the intercessor; little dog mediates their relationship)
Are there other religious metaphors which underlie the poem?
What characteristics are ascribed to divinity?
What seems original about this poem? Audacious?
Poem 6: What traits are ascribed to love? (call and response, “Love as the source of Love, Love the Reply”) In which of these does the dog excel?
How does Whym enact his reply? How does the meter respond to his spinning dance?
With what antecedents is the dog’s dance associated? (the Delphic flame, Mt. Citheron, Greek rites)
What feature of his appearance becomes symbolic? (his golden fur)
What emotions does the dog feel as he dances? (worship of his one love)
Poem 7: What has been the history of the human relationship to animals? What antecedent in Christian theology would suggest that we should respect animals? (God seeks the lowly)
What is special about the animal-human relationship? (animals love without fully understanding, “From eyes that pierce us not”--love grasps the ideal but does not judge)
Poem 8, “Out of the East”: What is “eastern” about the dog’s presence? With what is he compared? (jewels, oriental prince, intense Bacchic dances) What were the rites of Eleutherius?
What happens to him when he is welcoming his mistress? (“all thy gems in flash, thy gold in shower”)
Poem 9: What sorrow does the speaker share with Whym? (their loved one has “gone away”) With what being is Whym compared? (Anubis, alert toward the sky)
What does the speaker pray that Whym may do? (watch above the absent one, and above her, binding them again)
Poem 10, “Semper Jam”: What is the meaning and significance of the title? (always now) What attitude in the dog does the speaker remember, now that his identity is frozen in death? (the form of life, but unable to respond)
Poem 11, “Dei Dono” (Gift of God): What gifts have been given Whym? (beauty in action, freshness) What metaphors describe his sense of happiness? (eager pulse created music, red flame)
Poem 12, “Absence”: How has Whym responded to his mistresses’ departure? What is his response to their return? (quickly forgets “the sorrow of that severance”)
Poem 13, “My Cup”: What sad event has occurred, and by whose agency? (they have given him poison as a form of euthanasia)
On what grounds does the speaker compare this with the Eucharist?
To what extent does this comparison seem valid?
How do the poem’s language and form express its painful meaning?
Poem 14, “Fur for Mandarins”: What does this poem celebrate? Does its tone and meter suggest any Shakespearian antecedents? (cmp. songs in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream")
Poem 15: What aspect of the dog’s sensibility is here celebrated? (lives in the present, “Now. Now!) How is this represented through meter and imagery?
Poem 16: What has frightened Whym, and how does the speaker interpret this? (the sea, frightened by infinitude) What has he supposedly sought instead? (infinity in warm hearts, that is, love)
Poem 17, “Created”: What memory does this poem evoke, and what grounds does it suggest for hope? (he had been curbed with a leash on the hills, but now can go free)
What account is given of the nature of existence? (a soul is born in confines, freed at death)
Poem 18, “In Extremis”: What has happened to the speaker at the moment of Whym’s death? (feels physical cold and breathlessness) What has happened to her heart? (love swirls around itself, is conscious of itself)
Poem 19: How has Whym's behavior changed in the days before his death? (becomes frenzied)
How does the speaker interpret this? (this was a divine ecstasy which brought delight before the sleep of death)
Poem 20: What are the thematic advantages of presenting Whym as a wanderer on earth?
How do the poem’s form and meter reflect this meaning?
How is his death interpreted? (inevitable, result of weariness)
Poem 21, “Adveni, Creator Spiritus”: What is added to the poem by its title? By its form of a prayer?
What lack does the speaker express? What is her prayer? (that she may hold Whym again)
Can this be answered literally within the context of the sequence? (presumably he can return in a vision, but she can only hold him in the imagined afterlife)
Poem 22: What aspects of the speaker’s domestic life has the dog shared? How are these celebrated? (sleeping, eating, loving, rejoicing together)
How had Whym greeted their rising? (had jumped on their couch each morning)
How had his death brought them together? (they grieve together, and in closeness “banish grief from death”)
Poem 23, “Liberal Love”: What aspects of the dog’s love are celebrated? How are these alleged to be purer than human love? (disinterested, passionate)
Poem 24: To “confess” one’s deepest emotions, where do people turn? Where has she been able to confide her most secret thoughts?
To what is the dog’s fur compared? (Jason’s Golden Fleece) Why has it been more comforting than a human breast? (comforting and absolving)
What results from such a “confessional”? (Sorrow buried, joy revealed)
Poem 25: What purpose is served by this invocation of the dog’s presence? (brings him back in memory) Does this catalogue suggest Barrett Browning’s “O how I love thee: let me count the ways. . . .”
Poem 26: How has the speaker reacted to suggestions that she should not grieve the death of her dog excessively? What then comforts her? (alone her spirit returns to “my unseen life,” infinity) What metaphor does she use for herself? (birds wheeling above a sea who swoop down to its depths)
Poem 27: What had been Whym’s state of existence until he met his mistress? What has tamed and ennobled him? (Love alone) How has this been different from “love of kind”? (of something outside of itself)
What do you make of the fact that this love is described as from Eros? (speaker identifies with this [unconventional] love)
Poem 28: What does the speaker envision will be her response as she approaches death? What sounds will make her greet death as a form of liberation? What spirit will first comfort her?
Poem 29: What religious/liturgical metaphors guide this final prayer? For what does the speaker pray? (that Whym may still love her loved one in the spirit world, giving her relief from grief at their separation)
Poem 30: What does the speaker ask? Will it likely be granted her? To whom does she pray? (not Whym, but “God of the Living Waters”) In what sense may “the little Chow’s upwelling love” remove her “thirst now and above”? (force of love may comfort)
Does this sequence achieve closure (at least in the sense that an elegy can achieve closure)? How is the effort at finding peace altered by the fact that it celebrates, among other things, the love of animals for their human companions?
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