Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”
Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” dramatizes the speaker’s metaphorical journey to explore the nature of a contrived, non-existent catastrophe. The speaker begins with a major historical and literary error: that there exists only one book of myths.
Introduction and Text of “Diving into the Wreck”
Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths.” Note that by stating she has read “the book of myths,” she is implying that there is only one such book.
This unfortunate beginning leaves the speaker’s thought processes nowhere to go to explore truth. By beginning with this claim, the speaker promises to take her listeners into sheer fantasy.
While the speaker creates a fascinating, metaphorical undersea diving expedition, she also creates an abysmally inaccurate revisionist history. Her so-called “wreck” becomes nothing but a straw man, built from the beginning claim of her having read “the book of myths.”
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 damages
worn by salt and sway 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.
“There isn’t a single ‘book of myths’.”
—Academy of American Poets
Commentary on “Diving into the Wreck”
Adrienne Rich did compose one poem that stands the test of time as a truly successful piece; that poem is “Living in Sin.” Unfortunately, “Diving into he Wreck,” a poem much more widely anthologized than Rich’s fine, successful “Living in Sin,” does not attain the literary value of Rich’s one masterpiece.
First Movement: A Single Book of Myths?
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.
Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths,” implying that there in only one “book of myths.” The speaker does not identify any specific book of myths she had read; this omission is significant.
There are, in fact, many books of myths—Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, Islamic, ancient Greek and Roman, and these identify only the five major religions and the two ancient cultural nationalities that have influenced Western civilization from its beginning through their books of myths.
But this speaker is not addressing reality or anything that is actually within the bounds of the historical record; she is reporting from an adolescent hatred of her culture, supposedly struggling against an oppression that she has to create as a straw man in order to burn down.
Thus this unnamed “book of myths” springs from the speaker’s imagination that has written a whole tome of nonsense targeting a phantom that her movement labels “The Patriarchy.” Therefore anything written, especially by men, and more specifically by white men, is contained in this speaker’s concocted fantasy called (according to her truth) “the book of myths.”
The speaker begins her journey to explore the metaphoric “wreck” armed with the information that she has gathered from reading this non-existent but concocted book of myths.
She takes a camera and a sharp knife with her. She dresses like a scuba-diver in “body-armor of black rubber / the absurd flipper / the grave and awkward mask.” She does not explain why the “flipper” is “absurd,” or what is “grave and awkward” about the “mask.”
Lest her listeners think she is really going on a Cousteau-like diving expedition, she disabuses them of that notion—she will not be aboard “the sun-flooded schooner” with “an assiduous team”; she will be here alone. She will remain in her library/study while examining further this unidentified, fictitious “book of myths.”
The speaker creates an extended metaphor likening her scrutiny of the book of myths to diving down to a shipwreck. She compares herself to the divers who plunge deep below the Atlantic to gather information about the Titanic.
The speaker, therefore, has made a judgment about that book of myths; it is like a giant ocean liner that hit an iceberg and sank into the sea, and now this brave speaker will determine the cause and possibly salvage whatever she can from the wreck.
Second Movement: Guilty Ladders
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.
The speaker notes the ladder, which she uses to descend into the water. The ladder “is always there / hanging innocently.” The comic effect jars the senses: what would a guilty ladder do? Hang guiltily, one supposes.
Also rather comical, as well as substance-free, is the claim, “We know what it is for / we who have used it.” Whether they have used it or not, most conscious individuals over the age of two know what a ladder is for.
The absurdities are beginning to accrue, damaging the credibility of this speaker’s ability to understand even the simplest of concepts, especially her remark about the ladder, which, if it were not used, would be merely, “a piece of maritime floss / some sundry equipment.” Of course, any equipment that has no specific use would be considered superfluous.
Third Movement: Descending into the Unknown
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.
The speaker descends the ladder into the ocean and cannot tell “when the ocean / will begin.” She reports that her flippers cripple her, and she crawls like an insect down the ladder. She seems to have difficulty approaching that “book of myths.”
Fourth Movement: An Ocean Filled with Air
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.
The speaker describes the color of the air, seeming to have forgotten that her metaphor created a diver entering the ocean: there would be no air in the ocean water. She claims she is “blacking out,” but she also claims that her mask is powerful.
The mask does a remarkable thing: “it pumps my blood with power.” This claim creates another absurdity; the mask protects the diver from drowning by covering her nose and furnishing oxygen; it has nothing to do with directly pumping blood.
Alone, she has to learn to how turn her body in the water. She is creating image upon image, claim upon claim that offer nothing of substance. She seems to imply that someone should have been there to help her learn to “turn [her] body without force”—but never reveals who or why such assistance would be expected or even necessary.
Fifth Movement: Ocean Breathing Is Surprisingly Different
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.
The speaker now reports that she almost forgets why she came, as she observes the sea creatures that are used to their habitat, and that “you breathe differently down here”—another superfluous remark, given the fact that she would be equipped with diving gear supplying the oxygen—obviously breathing with diving equipment would cause one to “breathe differently.”
When this speaker is not making blatantly false statements, she simply offers up simplistic remarks whose substance remains lacking, because the information they present is obvious, that is, already known.
Sixth Movement: Words, Maps, Purpose
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
In a failed attempt to bring the metaphor together, the speaker baldly states what the reader has known all along, “I came to explore the wreck.” She adds, “The words are purposes. / The words are maps.”
Again, she adds text without any new information to further her narrative. All agree that words have purpose and are similar to maps. The speaker adds, “I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail.” Again, nothing new here, that is what all divers who explore shipwrecks do.
Seventh Movement: Circles of Unreason
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 damages
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
The speaker then emphasizes that she came for the wreck itself “not the story of the wreck.” This metaphorically presents a very huge problem. Remembering that the “wreck” is the “book of myths.”
“Myths” are stories, and although she now claims she is really after the thing itself and not the myth, she has no way of securing that thing, because it exists only in the “book of myths.”
The speaker is now asking the reader to accept only her interpretation of the myths and not what others have found. She is implying that only she has truth of the thing; she can take the myth and make it not be a myth.
Eighth Movement: Because the Speaker Says So
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
In order to turn the wreck/myth into “the thing,” the speaker creates a drama of a mermaid and merman who “circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he.”
The speaker is now transforming herself from a mere reader/diver into an androgynous creature that has the delicious ability to report about the wreck merely because the speaker says so.
Ninth Movement: A Question of Death
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
This creature is actually dead, displaying a “drowned face [that] sleeps with open eyes.” The open eyes, unfortunately, cannot see any better than closed eyes when they are situated in the head of a corpse.
But then again, maybe they are not really dead, for she claims, “we are the half-destroyed instruments that once worked” but because of that iceberg now lie ruined beneath the waves.
Tenth Movement: Sculpting from Misinformed Fancy
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.
Apparently having grown tired of the water drama, the speaker sheds the scuba-gear and rouses up a universal, all-encompassing, profound statement: that “book of myths” does not contain our names. Whose names? Surely, she means to call attention to all of those women who have been left out of history. But this claim is simply not true.
In fact, there are many “books of myths” that contain the names and activities of many women throughout history, for example Greek mythology [1], Hindu [2], Norse [3], and Eqyptian [4]. According to Joanna Gillan, writing in “Ten Powerful and Fearsome Women of the Ancient World” [5],
There have been female figures throughout history who held powerful roles or played significantly influential parts too. Throughout history there have been many powerful women who have led nations or guided armies into war, renowned not only as fearsome fighters, but also as cunning strategists and inspirational leaders. There were others who made a name for themselves in a domain traditionally held by men and whose stories, carried forward over the centuries, continue to be told today.
The speaker has made the disingenuous claim that women have been omitted from mythological and historical narratives, based on her own fabricated notion of one non-existent book of myths.
But that notion of women being omitted from history remains a disingenuous talking point in the feminist movement. And it is one talking point that can be easily refuted with a little common sense and some serious research.
Sources
[1] Mostafa Abo El Makarem. “The Role Of Women In The Greek Mythology.” Promediaz. Updated August 5, 2021.
[2] Jay Varma. “Panchakanya: Five Powerful Women From The Epics.” Sandeep & Gitanjali Maini Foundation. Accessed March 4, 2024.
[3] Karl Andersson. “21 Norse Goddesses and Their Influence, Powers & Myths.” Nordic Perspective. January 25, 2023.
[4] Joshua J. Mark. “The Women of Ancient Egypt.” World History Encyclopedia. February 28, 2024.
[5] Joanna Gillan. “Ten Powerful and Fearsome Women of the Ancient World.” Ancient Origins. Updated August 1, 2018.
Commentaries on Other Adrienne Rich Poems
- Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” Adrienne Rich’s poem “Living in Sin” is one of American literature’s finest pieces in free verse. Its theme of disillusionment plays out in colorful sense imagery. This little drama remains one of this poet’s best poetic efforts.
- Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” Structured in three awkward movements, Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” explores a theme that feminists [1] employ to assert concocted damage done to women by “patriarchal” marriage.
