Poets | Members | Poem of the Day | Top 40 | Search | Comments | Privacy
November 22nd, 2009 - we have 234 poets, 8,023 poems and 17,904 comments.
Adrienne Rich - Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Added: on July 12th, 2009 at 3:50 AM | Viewed: 52256 times | Comments and analysis of Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich Comments (32)


Diving into the Wreck - Comments and Information

Poet: Adrienne Rich (Adrienne Rich Art)
Poem: Diving into the Wreck

Comment 32 of 32, added on September 22nd, 2009 at 8:53 PM.

This short story is about coming of age. It's about a person who just reached the age in life where they become an adult, and explore things for themself.

Traci Schaumberg from United States
Comment 31 of 32, added on September 18th, 2009 at 6:53 AM.

I do not understand MLH's comment at all. Firstly, I do agree with MLH's basic premise - that a poem can be said to fail, if it does not 'stand alone'. MLH goes on to argue that critics have identified themes such as 'abuse' and 'patriarchal society' which a reading of the poem alone does not suggest. However, I think the critics are wrong and so is MLH. I read the poem and it seems very obviously to be about personal disaster, and looking into the murky depths of the unconscious to seek the treasure of knowledge. This inner journey is romantcised by Rich through her utilisation of the imagery and symbols of 'the quest'. It is a lovely, evocative poem which conveys so beautifully the sensations of the body and mind in a meditative/trance state - hence the references to alterations in breathing etc. "you breathe differently down here"...and to a shift in her mode of consciousness ..."I am blacking out".

Ramesh Ramsahoye from Ireland
Comment 30 of 32, added on July 12th, 2009 at 3:50 AM.

I have been familiar with this poem, taught this poem, even wrote a poem that responds to this poem. This poem is a masterpiece, as scholars will explain, but let me first share my experiences with this poem.

The first time I read the poem, it was part of an assigned reading in undergraduate studies, and the pure imagistic genius of the poem stirred my imagination. I knew nothing of this author at the time, about 1978. I began to re-read the poem, as the best poems will urge, and I understood only that I was working with a masterpiece.

No, I did not understand it completely, but I understood what the poem said to me. I understood what the poem did to my afterthoughts, making for me a needed response after some years of studies and fine tuning of my creative writing skills.

I never took the poem as a literal snapshot of the author's life, because I do not think that it was meant to be that. An author and a persona created for speaking a poem are not duplicate characters. They share much in a poem, the poet's craft and the persona's pathos, the poet's ethos and the persona's logos.

If a reader wants simple and straightforward reading, the reader should read prose, but I caution that Flannery O'Connor will challenge a reader's senses with her fiction. A simple reader should stick to composition and rhetoric, and stay away from creative writing, unless the reader wants art.

Art imitates life. Prose talks about things. Know the difference. It is significant.


Patrick Wright from Korea, South

Are you looking for more information on this poem? Perhaps you are trying to analyze it? The poem, Diving into the Wreck, has received 32 comments. Click here to read them, and perhaps post a comment of your own. Of course you can also always discuss poems by Adrienne Rich with others on the American Poems poetry forum!

Poem Info

Rich Info
Copyright © 2000-2009 Gunnar Bengtsson. All Rights Reserved. Links | Bookstore