“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.