Adrienne Rich “Diving into the Wreck” First having read the ..., Lecture notes of Poetry

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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 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. Exercise Notes The narrator in Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck” takes the reader on a wholly real and wholly imaginary journey. The specific sensory diving details ground the reader throughout: I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. Yet—notice the opening line: First having read the book of myths … In one sense, we find the entire technique or approach that Rich deploys in this first stanza. The sweeping gesture of “having read the book of myths” creates an imaginative space of wonder and exploration. The discerning reader understands that what follows will be figurative, metaphorical and perhaps even fantastical.

Then, immediately after that, the narrator carefully lays the realistic foundation for her journey. Read the rest of this poem with these points in mind and observe the language Rich’s narrator uses to signal this is not just an ordinary vacation-time dive: the very word “wreck,” of course: “it pumps my blood with power/ the sea is another story;” “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.” By the time the reader reaches the following powerful, emotional stanza, the narrator has made it clear that the stakes are high indeed: 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 Ask yourself how you could use this indirect, imaginative approach to material you do not want to describe realistically. Notice how this approach both insulates Rich from handling the material directly and provides her with the pleasure of creating original art, Exercise Instructions Use Rich’s deliberate, authoritative first-person persona-narrator. Create an imaginative scenario you can use to talk about a situation or state of mind you might find difficult going at directly. Use language that suggests what is at stake, but do not explain or provide autobiographical details. Again, it is the narrator’s personality—the on-stage performer, the writerly persona—that you want to try on. Finally, feel free to write in poetry, prose or non-fiction. In this course, it does not matter. The point is that you observe how Rich’s technique enabled her to express herself with indirection and artistry.