Adrienne Rich’s (1929-2012) career spanned seven decades, with tons of poetry and essays written in that time frame. Her work from the 60s and 70s was considered radical due to its free verse form as well as the feminist and political stances she would take. Her work inspired many second-wave feminists, and by the time she died, she was “one of the most respected American Poets” (Poetry Foundation). For more information, click Here to head over to her biography on the Poetry Foundation’s website.

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. (Lines 1-7)

This book of myths gets mentioned throughout the poem and indeed, is the leading force of the poem. Myths, in essence, symbolize various social, cultural, and sometimes historical narratives that shape a society; think ancient Greece, for example. However, as these myths get passed down from generation to generation, you lose information and details, and suddenly the story is far from reality. It is this fact that myths can become misleading or false over time that sends our speaker into the wreck to figure out what is happening. Readers can infer this by looking at the following lines:

the wreck and not the story of the wreck
The thing itself and not the myth. (lines 62-63)

Rich wants readers to look deeper than what they’ve been told or what they’ve read; to find some hidden truth about the world, or even just about themselves that they have yet to figure out.

The word wreck itself could refer to any destructive event, disaster, or trauma in the world as a whole or just the speaker themselves. It appears multiple times throughout the poem. Readers can infer that the wreck is underwater due to the fact that the speaker is getting dressed in diving gear and is jumping into the water. This heavily implies that the water acts as some sort of a shield or barrier that keeps the wreck hidden from sight; and everyone knows the saying 'out of sight, out of mind' meaning it could be long forgotten, which in turns plays into the usage of the book of myths symbol Rich uses. We never really get any details about the wreck - readers don’t know if it is a physical thing or an abstract concept, that is left open ended for readers to consider.

As the title says, the speaker is diving into the wreck, and is in a constant downward descent during the poem. Rich wants readers to feel/see the descent themselves as the speaker experiences it. Take a look at these lines:

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. (lines 22-28)

Rich places emphasis on the fact that the speaker is going down, entering the water, by using the repetitive technique and stating “I go down” twice. Rich makes sure that the reader knows, without confusion, what it is the speaker is doing. Once she’s established the ‘what,’ she moves on to make sure the reader can envision what is happening.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out… (lines 34-37)

Anyone who knows anything about the ocean knows that the further down you dive, the less there is light from the sun, which in turn, makes the water around you change color until you are at the floor and completely without light. They also know that the further down you dive, the more pressure there is on the diver’s body. Making it hard for the speaker to stay present and focused. Which could very well be the reason why the wreck itself never gets a physical description. Usually, when authors invoke descent or falling, it is so readers will attribute some aspect to known concepts like the fall from grace, when the archangels were sent to hell. So to see it not mean anything more than falling, especially in a poem with as much meaning as this one, is an interesting perspective to take on the topic.

There are several meanings I want to look at - and probably many more, depending on what literary theories one uses - in this section.

Our speaker is on an adventure - they are searching for the truth. If we turn our attention back to the previously mentioned book of myths, it is clear that the speaker wants to know what really happened in the location they are at. This can be supported by the following textual evidence; the use of diving gear and calling it “body-armor” (line 5), the camera to gather evidence, and line 52: “I came to explore the wreck”, which is readers can make the leap from explorer to adventurer quite easily with a thesaurus. And, the most important part is the fact that, like all well-written adventures, our speaker encounters challenges like the pressure of the water where they almost black out, and how their “flippers cripple” (line 29) them as they try to descend down the ladder into the water. Couple all of this evidence with the book of myths and what I believe it stands for and you have all the elements of a quest or an adventure for one purpose, to find something - to find the truth.

However, the book of myths coupled with the usage and image of a wreckage also leads me to believe that it could be about history - more specifically how history can be twisted and bent to fit a certain perspective, cutting off the truth of events and creating erasure of people, places, and events. This can be played into in a physical sense, as if the book of myths and the wreck being underwater could both contribute to something being covered up and forgotten about, due to time and history. Especially since history is written by the victors. But it can also be in the metaphorical sense as well. It could be something personal in the speaker’s life or family that the speaker is trying to discover. It could be some fundamental truth about themselves and their life that they are seeking out, but history and time play a pressurizing role in them. I am not looking at this through a feminist nor queer lens, but I did have a professor analyze the poem in a way that the speaker was discovering their queerness and their queer identity. So this would fit into the personal history theory I’ve worked out here.

The images that Rich produces in this poem sounds like an 'active imagination' exercise. It is as if the author is descending into her own unconscious (the ocean) through a ladder, with “the book of myths”, a knife, camera, “body-armor of black rubber”, “flippers”, and an “awkward mask.” The depth in which she expresses her appearance points towards the persona that she is carrying inward. She seems prepared, to decode and capture the wreck that she wants to explore. This inward journey of active imagination can only be traversed on one's own, as she points out with “here alone.”

When the air gets black, her mask, or the persona pumps her “blood with power.” There seems to be an imaginary boundary between the personal and collective unconscious - as she has to learn to turn her “body without force / in the deep element.” Still going down, she soon forgets the purpose of her visit, observing a shift from her idea of self to that of others down there, her breathing changes.

Finding the “drowned face always staring / toward the sun” brings forth the shadow archetype. Being adamant to find “the thing itself”, not the story or myth through an exploration of the wreck, she circles around as a mermaid and encounters a merman. Diving “into the hold. / I am she: I am he” - and here comes a reflection of the Animus archetype. The masculine part of a woman's psyche, though they are one, in the conscious realm they are dissected.

I found this when I googled the poem: Diving into the Wreck: Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes. It gives in-depth analysis of nearly everything in the poem and could be useful for students looking into the work more.

See also the book from which this poem comes Blood Bread and Poetry