Wingfoot Lake

“Wingfoot Lake” names four different bodies of water: the swimming pool (Line 2), Wingfoot Lake (Line 27), the Mississippi (Line 29), and the Nile (Line 31). Each of these bodies of water is presented as being possessed or owned by someone. The white swimmers and their “arms jutting / into the chevrons of high society” (Lines 4-5) claim the swimming pool. Goodyear owns the “park / under the company symbol” (Lines 35-36) that contains Wingfoot Lake. The speaker describes the Mississippi as “Thomas’ Great Mississippi / with its sullen silks” (Lines 29-30). The Nile, finally, “belonged / to God” (Lines 31-32).

This ownership over particular spaces furthers the poem’s themes of segregation and exclusion. By placing Goodyear and the white people in the pool in these positions of ownership—and in the same position as God, who owns the Nile—the poem suggests that hubris and absurdity are both inherent in private land ownership. This reading is perhaps complicated by the same ownership relation between Thomas and the “Great Mississippi” (Line 29), but the word “Great” implies a tone of reverence and respect toward the Mississippi and its power. Reference to the Mississippi’s “sullen silks” (Line 30) also puts the river in an ownership position.