The Sea is Another Story

‘Diving into the Wreck’ by Adrienne Rich questions the guiding power of language and narrative in our everyday, subjective experiences [1]. The poem’s speaker, step by step, leads the reader through the sequences of their underwater adventure, guiding us through the ocean and, eventually, to the finding of a submerged shipwreck. 

According to Robin Becker, Rich’s poetry is partly about how we ‘might imagine and enter another’s consciousness’ during the very acts her poems describe [2]. Arguably, Becker’s description fits perfectly into an analysis of ‘Diving into the Wreck’. It is a fleeting poem which shares the experience of deep-sea diving in a sort of in the moment stream of thought. The poem is fleeting because, for the reader, it feels momentary as if the experience were their own.

The poem studies the narrative function of thought during a hyper-stimulating experience. The purpose of the speaker’s journey is to locate a so-called ‘wreck’ in the middle of the ocean. The speaker concentrates on the physical strain of swimming underwater. Suddenly, in this moment, the body’s activity distorts the mind.

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[.]

Rich’s language has an anchoring effect. The line ‘And now:’ (divided by a semi-colon) represents the speaker's mental processes. The speaker attempts to steer their train of thought away from their surroundings and back to the goal at hand. The speaker’s goals are easy to forget, hence the need to backtrack and re-think. The semi-colon forces the reader to do the same.

Thus, the speaker’s brain tends to drift in such situations, and it is up to them to pursue a focused state of mind. In doing so, the speaker realises the guiding power of language.

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.

According to the speaker, words are objects, rather than productions of the mind. These words come to the speaker to re-unify a sense of a singular goal: to find the wreck. As such, they are ‘purposes’, they are ‘maps’, tools which allow the speaker to maintain a sense of mission. In this instance, language transcends its communicative role. Instead, language is a means to solidify and understand experience. The speaker wants to know what it means, metaphysically speaking, to navigate the sea with a specified goal in mind.  

Written in vers libre, this poem challenges the reader to re-live the experience of the speaker. Like a film, the poem forces its audience into a certain mindset. The poem’s language leads us into the subjective consciousness of the speaker, reliving their experience as if it were in the present. As such, the speaker’s shared experience is dynamic, or in flux: it is ever changing according to the present moment.

This idea fits into Rich’s general view of art. Through writing poems, Rich strove to preserve the individual consciousness. As part of her personal politics, she once said that

art needs to grow organically out of a social compost nourishing to everyone, a literate citizenry . . . a society honoring both human individuality and the search for a decent, sustainable common life [3].

Through emphasising the interior aspects of experience in ‘Diving into the Wreck’, Rich applies this vision of a world which honours the individual will onto how she constructs a poem. She seeks to transfer the speaker’s existence into the minds of its readers by creating the impression that the poem is within the here and now. Thus, she keeps the speaker’s experience alive. She preserves her idea that art can be nourishing to everyone through, literally, forcing the reader to feel and sense the subjective position of the poem’s speaker.

Notes:

[1] Adrienne Rich, ‘Diving into the Wreck’ in Geoffrey Moore (ed.), The Penguin Book of American Verse (London, 1989), pp 513-15.

[2] Robin Becker, ‘Diving into the Dream: A Poet’s Reflection on the Influence of Adrienne Rich’s Poetry’ The Women’s Review of Books, 29/5 (2012), p. 21.

[3] Quoted in Jeanette E. Riley, Meredith Benjamin, and Maggie Rehm, ‘Introduction’ Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 46/7 (2017), p. 607.

Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012. Photo by Thomas Victor.