Blog Post #4: Topic 2

            20^th century poet Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 to an intellectually accomplished family. Rich was politically involved and her poetry reflected her political and personal transformations as well as her life perspective. In 1970, in a quick procession of events, Rich left her husband, became widowed, and came out as a lesbian. As a feminist and a woman, her work was explicit and radical. Conceit, by literary definition, is an extended metaphor or complex logic that governs an entire poem. In “Diving into the Wreck” the wreck is symbolic of patriarchy and the action around it serves as a reference to something else.

            “Diving into the Wreck” acts as a piece about artistic self-discovery. In reference to Rich’s biography, the mission represents an exploration and transformation of gender identity by the narrator. The explorer carries “a book of myths” down into the sea. They are important to the mission, later stating, “the thing I came for: / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth”. These myths symbolize the arbitrary rules and roles of patriarchy. As a woman, this book of myths has no place or reference for explorers like herself. Yet she “dives” down anyway, looking to the past to understand and challenge the reality of the present. The journey is a critique of the old myths and the treasure of the wreckage is knowledge. The wreckage itself is the critique of the cultural origin of the relations between sexes and the self-awareness to break free from it.

Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck” offers very little description of the wreck itself but rather gives a detailed explanation of how the wreck is approached and how the explorer understands the mission. As denoted by the title, the poem focuses on the process and attitude of the explorer and of the action of exploration and investigation. She writes, “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”. Rich utilizes descriptive diction to paint the scene of a beautiful yet dark ocean and an explorer much smaller than the powerful body of water they have emerged themselves in. This is representative of the hierarchy of power between men and women and how women are forcefully immersed into a misogynistic culture. The language in the poem makes it seem as if the narrator is searching for something more in the wreck than the actual ship ruins. “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”. She has surrendered her gender identity and the stereotypical roles of her sex. She seeks to learn in order to dismantle the systemic patriarchy that confines her.

An important shift in narrative perspective takes place throughout the duration of the poem. From “I” to “we”, the explorer is simultaneously male and female. “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,”. The wreckage is of the dichotomization of sex and the selfhood within each sex: man and woman. Through the narrator, Rich is wondering whether or not the female body is her own while simultaneously arguing that men and women are the same. The explorer finds themselves in the wreck, part treasure and part corpse. But they are not individualized, they are realized as part of a collective whole of humanity. Rich states, “We are, I am, you are,” as a powerful cry to women. She is stating that together, women can write new myths, redefine themselves in society, and mend the wreckage that is the faults of patriarchy.