A conceit is an elaborate metaphor in writing or speech. While
a metaphor is a comparison between two things, a conceit is an extended version
of this and makes a comparison between two things are that extremely dissimilar.
An example of a conceit, as many people say, is Diving into the Wreck, a poem by Adrienne Rich. This poem is about
the speaker, a diver, who is looking for the wreck of a ship at the bottom of
the ocean. It talks about the trip down the ladder, the feeling of entering
into the big sea of water, and then arriving at the ship wreck. The imagery of
this poem is laid out nice and clear for readers. But even though it’s easy to
picture everything in the poem, it has many different interpretations, and that’s
one reason why this poem is a conceit.
One way to interpret Diving
into the Wreck is that it is an extended metaphor for Adrienne Rich’s love
affair that has ended. In 1953, Rich married Alfred H. Conrad, a Harvard
University economist. On poet.org, it is said that after publishing the poetry
book The Diamond Cutters, fellow poet
Randall Jarrell wrote that Rich gives off the feeling of a “princess in a fairy
tale”. This feeling did not last long, however. As Rich approached her 30s, her
life and poetry both slowly started to go through a change. In the 1960s, Rich
wrote many poems and placed them into collections like Leaflets and Snapshots of a
Daughter-in-Law. These works do not give off the image of a fairy tale
princess anymore. Instead, the content of the poems are about racism and women’s
role in society. The content isn't the only thing that changed; the style also
went from metric patterns to free verse. And in 1970, Rich divorced her husband
who later committed suicide. Diving into
the Wreck was written in 1973.
I think this poem is a metaphor of the changes she went
through that led to her failed love affair. In the sixth stanza of the poem,
Rich writes, “I came to explore the wreck…/ I came to see the damage that was
done/ and the treasures that prevail”. This can draw back to what made Rich
change her style of writing. She explored the world and found out about just
how bad it is. She was introduced to racism and realized how much women were
really worth. She was exploring the wreck that the real world is. In a few
stanzas before, she writes, “First the air is blue and then/ it is bluer and
then green and then/ black and I am blacking out” (4). This can be a metaphor
of her love affair that has ended because of the similar sufferings of losing a
lover and losing your breath. It is a complex comparison between her emotional
state and the physical state of diving.
I think you did a good job taking into consideration historical and biographical information to make inferences as well as analyzing specific lines from the poem. I do think that you could have included a more uniting conclusion that sums up the significance of the poem because I think there could be a stronger connection between the second and third paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI like the organization of your post. You introduce us to the poem, and give a concise summary of what happens and how you will use that to demonstrate the conceit. I liked that you gave a separate paragraph to Rich's mini bio and that you compared her previous work to the Diving Into the Wreck poem. I think your ending was a little abrupt, but I can understand due to the word count constraint.
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