Michael Field, Whym Chow, Flame of Love (1914)

  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?
  1. What is the significance of the title, “Whym Chow: Flame of Love”? The epigraph?
  1. Who seems to be the sequence’s principal speaker? Or can you tell?
  1. What are some of the many ways religion is used in the poem? What strands of religion seem to be represented? (pagan, Christian) How do these complement (or oppose) one another? (examples include nos. 2, 5, 21)
  1. 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)
  1. What is added by the poem’s appeals to Dionysius and pagan rites? (celebration of life force)
  1. Does the sequence have a progression or convey a narrative, and if so, of what? Does the questing speaker achieve any form of closure?
  1. Does this poem remind you of other elegies or works of literature you have read? (compare Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”)
  1. 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)
  1. Is it significant that the sequence has 30 poems, marked as XXX?
  1. Do the titles which preface some of the poems help in understanding the sequence?
  1. 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)
  1. 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)
  1. 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?
  1. Is this a good poetic sequence? Why or why not? Is it successful in merging earlier poetic conventions with original and new themes?
  1. 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:

  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?
  2. What are some allusions in the line, “Forth, Forth! Away! He is not of these Halls--“?
  3. Indroit--What startling event opens the poem? In what form has the dog reappeared, and who has brought him thus?
  4. Poem 3--What radical difference has altered his appearance? What is significant about the fact that they may not touch him? (“Nolo me tangere”)
  5. Trinity--What are features of the poem’s form? What is its meaning?
  6. With what supernatural being is the dog contrasted? Why this choice among others? What religious metaphors underlie the poem?
  7. What role is ascribed to the little dog? What characteristics are ascribed to divinity?
  8. What seems original about this poem? Audacious?