Wingfoot Lake

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

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Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

“The Bean Eaters” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1960)

Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Bean Eaters” provides a window into Brooks’ experience in the cramped housing units where many people of color were forced to live between the 1940s and the 1960s. “The Bean Eaters” uses simple images to depict these living conditions and operates mostly on the concrete, descriptive level. Dove’s “Wingfoot Lake” uses similarly simple images but delves into their abstract resonances—particularly when the poem takes a lyrical turn and communicates Beulah’s thoughts.

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden (1962)

Like Dove’s poem, Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” looks back to struggles and experiences of the previous generation. Hayden’s poem focuses on the hard and often thankless housework his father performed. The father’s work represents much of the extra work that Black families had to do for a reasonable standard of living. While Hayden is only looking back to his father, and is not as removed from him as Dove is from her grandparents, both poets engage with the same generation.

“Dusting” by Rita Dove (1981)

“Dusting” is another poem from Dove’s Thomas and Beulah and comes in the first half of “Canary in Bloom.” This poem shares many formal elements with the later “Wingfoot Lake,” including the lyrical asides that are typical of Dove’s Beulah poems. Because “Dusting” engages with subjects and themes more similar to the above poems by Brooks and Hayden than to “Wingfoot Lake,” comparing the works clarifies Dove’s own stylistic approach to poetry. Lyrical asides, enjambment, loose syntax, and short lines are representative of Dove’s work at the time.

“Demeter's Prayer to Hades” by Rita Dove (1992)

Dove is best known for her poems that deal with issues of race or historical injustices. However, she has written such a diverse body of poetry that it is difficult to make generalizations about the themes, subjects, or forms that she has used throughout her career. “Demeter’s Prayer to Hades” gives voice to Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture, and speaks to Hades, the Greek god of the underworld. In Greek mythology, Demeter enters the underworld after Hades abducts Persephone. Dove’s poem picks up on this narrative and demonstrates her poetic breadth.

Further Literary Resources

“Shifting the (Im)balance” by Evie Shockley (2013)

Despite Dove’s success and accolades as a poet, her ideas about poetry have sometimes proved controversial. Dove’s selection for the 2011 Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry made some scholars and poets feel she was trying to rewrite the American canon to include more voices of color and was doing so at the expense of the anthology’s quality. Though this discussion has mostly quieted, the poems that Dove chose to include in this anthology are indicative of her ideas about poetry and its role in national identity. This 2013 article by Evie Shockley describes the controversy over the 2011 anthology and explores how some of the controversial selections represent Dove’s aims as a poet and an anthologist.

“A Politics of Mere Being” by Carl Phillips (2016)

The intersection of politics and race has made it difficult for artists of color to create works untethered from their racial identity. In this article, poet Carl Phillips explores the tensions between racial identity, politics, and poetic creation that have shaped how poetry by people in marginalized communities is received and published. In some ways, these identities are always in negotiation. Though Dove’s work does not always engage with these ideas, they are very relevant to the subtle depiction of race in “Wingfoot Lake.” In particular, Beulah’s refusal of the politicized and dated language of “Afro-American” (Line 25) represents one way in which identity is generational and always in flux. The “mere being” that Phillips discusses in this article is also similar to Beulah’s dismissal of politicized labels.

“The Harlem Race Riot of 1964” by Spencer Stultz (2017)

Dove’s poem is set on July 4, 1964, less than two weeks prior to the events that led to the Harlem race riot of the same year, which aimed to end race-based violence. The riots did not reach Ohio, but they spread out to over 12 cities in the northern United States and were mirrored by civil rights protests in the South. This article by Spencer Stultz gives a brief account of the Harlem race riot and its place in the larger Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

“A History of Segregation in the United States” by Matthew A. McIntosh (2020)

The first stanza of “Wingfoot Lake” depicts Thomas and Beulah visiting a racially segregated swimming pool. Though this is the only time segregation is explicitly depicted in the poem, the separation of Black and white Americans is sustained in subtle ways. Much of the underlying tension between Beulah and the younger generations pivots on her experience growing up in a racially segregated America. Though segregation took many forms in different states, counties, and cities, Matthew A. McIntosh’s article covers the main aspects and effects of this practice.