Interpretations.

we will, i will, we shall, dive into the wreck of the world caused and crowded upon nothing but our own mistakes and misfortunes and reasons and interpretations. we will, i will, we shall, take it upon ourselves to hold these findings in our palms and rest them then upon our hearts.

this is all... i shall, will, say... willed and ready to dive

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. interpretations. make. or break. or matter. or not. read. re-read. do. un-do. the speaker, made androgynous in diving gear, goes underwater to hunt "the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth", and identifies with those drowned and silenced as much as the diver who finds them and can, must, report back to the world above. poetryarchive Added by: Connor Crazy piece about how men and women are both casualties of a confused sexuality. It's about viewing the corpse objectively, as neither a man nor a woman (the corpse, also is androgenous) and dispelling old myths. Cool stuff. Added by: kevin This poem is really about an individual finding themselves. The entire metaphor is the diver and the ship wreck. A person protects themselves before seeking their self-discovery with all of the diving gear because of the unknown. A person will always discover a "wreck" in their past but most look past that for the treasures that have been buried away. The last couple stanzas speak of how we are all together in this feat of self-discovery and we must always seek our past and ourselves in ORDER to create our future. Feminism 2003-04-18 Added by: SFitz Rich was a Civil Rights and anti-war activist in the 60s. She consistently intertwines politics and poetry. This poem was written in 1973, and is about the feminist struggle. She is alone in this journey to the depths of the earth, to a place pre-civilization, yet she has the comfort of knowing others before her have taken the same journey. It is a journey that must be taken alone, although in much of Rich's writing she refers to a group of people, or even society as a whole, as one. The wreck is the damage that has been done over hundreds, thousands of years that has led to the oppression or at least the inequality of women, and a patriarchal society. Her book of myths are the falsities instilled in the minds of those in Western society, including gender roles, which she disspells when she incorporates both man and woman into her body. The book of myths ("in which our names do not appear") may also be the Bible, seeing as how women are portrayed as the root of sin and men as our Lord and saviors. Main idea of the poem: "I came to explore the wreck... the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail...I am she: I am he." Basically, to achieve an ideal world, one would have to travel backward to a time before humans existed (since gender roles began in theory with Adam and Eve the creator of sin) and we would have to start EVERYTHING over from scratch- "And besides/ you breathe differently down here." We would have to create a society minus gender roles and become one people- "the one who find our way back to this scene." universal poem 2004-01-21 Added by: JDog I strongly disagree with SFitz's comments on Feminism. Though it was true that Adrienne was a strong fighter for women's rights, I believe she was aiming for a more universal idea. The line "we circle silently about the wreck" depicts that the character has not gone to change anything, but to solely observe "the evidence of the damage". The person can't change what has already been done, and may only "stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank". This dive is not to ridicule or change, but mainly to explore and gain knowledge. a thought on the necessity of writing in the first 2004-05-09 Added by: neil mulligan Rich has written this poem in the first person and as an extended metaphor for several reasons. Firstly, and act like a dive is a very personal and individual experience which can be very challenging and scary. This is why Rich’s quest into the patriarchal world of fifties and sixties America is represented so adequately by the metaphor. Also she is writing this poem as part of the feminist movement, and there are sure to be thousands of other women wishing to follow in her footsteps. For this reason I think it is important that she be writing in the first person as if to say that this is what I have done, and even though, as the metaphor suggests, it was not easy, so can you the reader. Right from the start of this poem, Rich talks about reading the book of myths which I think alludes to the patriarchal state of America, she has first read this book (or worried about the reality of the male orientated world) and then prepared to get her diving gear on and go and see if the wreck matches up the myth (or go into the real world as a feminist to see what difference she can make or treasure she can find). The conclusion of the poem therefore talks of finding a way back to the wreckage carrying that same book of myths, only this time ‘our names do not appear’. The significance of this line is that having engaged on this personal conquest, the myth of the male orientated world no longer applies to her, and all those who read with her and ‘dived’ with her. The myth has been quashed by the symbolic and brave actions of ‘rolling up of sleeves’ and getting in there and fighting for equality. First person in this poem is the most apt style to write such a propaganda-based poem. The most essential idea I believe that Adrienne Rich needed to get across was that I have done it and now so can you. This could only be achieved by writing in the first person. thanks you guys at plagiarist.com i have benefited from you greatly. 2004-10-25 Added by: Amanda The first line of the poem reveals a book of myths. I believe the book she carries contains the societal myths that separate men and women. She also carries a knife to maybe cut away the past and a camera to record the new one she hopes to discover. She dives into the wreck, the mess this battle of the sexes created, hoping to write new myths, of love and passion in order to heal humanity. Also, she dives to discover maybe the truth behind these myths. I think Adrienne is the speaker of this piece, and she is gearing up to redefine the roles of men and women and to look beyond gender. She’s alone in this piece, signifying that maybe sometimes she feels alone in her fight towards equality for women in a male dominated world. When she gets down there she finds a corpse that is also treasure. Line 83 I think refers to her and maybe all women. She sees a piece of herself in the corpse, herself as a dominated woman under the “curse” of a patriarchal world. I think what the speaker intends to say that she is surviving this wreck. Lines 34-36 and 50-51 give me the feeling that maybe she is in a daze or blacking out, but still holds some kind of control. I’ve been diving before and it is sort of a surreal world down there, even ways we would move or even communicate are different. The power her mask contains is symbolic, as it pumps her full of power while she is diving. 2005-05-22 Added by: Jaysto'