Blog Post 4 Topic 2

Diving Into The Wreck is a free verse poem published by Adrienne Rich in 1973. Rich  uses  short lines and conversational diction to narrate her experiences as if she is telling it in real time. Rich’s use of active voice, writing lines like “I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps  my blood…” allows the reader to sense the feelings she is experiencing. When one uses takes her perspective of diving into this wreck along with some information about her personal life, it is clear that the wreck is a conceit for her journey of self discovery with sexuality.

In the first stanza before she has entered the ocean, she tells “I put on/ the body-armor of black rubber/ the absurd flippers…”. The enjambment of these lines isolates “(I) put on” which can be interpreted as it’s informal meaning -  a deception or hoax. The fact that she refers to her flippers as absurd also suggests that she feels like she is dressed up in something silly that is not her true self. In her world above water, Rich protects her identity in the costume that is expected of her to wear but later in the poem when she is in the water, she refers to herself as “the mermaid whose dark hair/ streams black, the merman in his armored body” as if she was meant to live in the ocean. She states her purpose of the dive is to explore the wreck but finds herself distracted from her goal  by those who have “always lived here”, or the other people who also identify as homosexual and who provide her solace and solidarity. She also writes “.. and besides, you breathe differently down here” which shows that perhaps despite the discomfort of first entering the ocean, she senses that she is more at peace in this world among others who relate to her.

The title of the poem highlights that the wreck is the main topic. The metaphor of a shipwreck is very clearly expressing some sort of disaster that she is familiar with.  Her biography mentions that her ex-husband committed suicide shortly after their separation. When Rich affirms that she came down to see “the drowned face always staring/ toward the sun/ the evidence of the damage” it is likely that she is referring to her dead ex-husband who was impacted by her radical lifestyle choice. The next stanza however, upholds her decision and makes any doubts about the comparison of the dive as a metaphor for her self discovery clear. She explicitly refers to herself as both a mermaid and a merman and boldly states “I am her. I am he…”

It is evident that Rich has made this “dive” before, first when she says “ We know what it is for,/we who have used it” when describing the ladder which bridges the air from the ocean and also at the end of the poem when she admits that she and others like herself “find our way back to this scene”. The ocean brings out her true self yet simultaneously hides the wreck that it caused in her life.