Summary
“Diving into the Wreck” is a ten-stanza poem written in free verse with heavy enjambment. The first stanza shows the speaker, “having read the book of myths,” making preparations for a dive that she will take alone. The second and third show her climbing down a boat’s ladder. In the fourth and fifth, she confronts and describes the blue-green world of the ocean. In the six and seventh, she explains her reasons for exploring the wreck: the “damage it has done,” its hidden treasures. In particular, she wants to confront the truth of the wreck rather than its “story.” The poem becomes more metaphorical in stanza eight, when the speaker confronts and identifies with both a mermaid and a merman. Using the pronoun “we” to include both these figures as well as the reader, she concludes that “we” survey the wreck, “ carrying/ a book of myths / in which/ our names do not appear.”
Analysis
The first stanza of the poem sets the scene, introducing an important metaphor for the rest of the poem: the “book of myths” that the speaker reads before embarking on her journey. This book of myths can be understood to refer to western cultural myths, including the subordinate role of women in relation to men. Having read this book, the narrator introduces two items, a camera and a knife, which can be interpreted as symbols for her intention to document accurately, and to defend herself. As the stanza progresses, we see the narrator put the “body-armor” of a scuba suit, both continuing the idea that she needs to defend herself, as well as introducing her intention to dive into the ocean. She compares herself to Jacques Cousteau, the Frenchman famous for his documentary films and invention of scuba equipment, noting that while Costeau had an “assiduous team,” she is “here alone.”
In the second stanza, the speaker further develops the metaphor of the descent into the ocean as the exploration and investigation of history itself. The speaker states on a line by itself, “There is a ladder.” While this ladder may appear like a piece of “maritime floss,” a useless piece of string, its true meaning is evident to those who have used it. We may think of this ladder as poetry itself, especially given the long, vertical form of this very poem, comprised of lines just as a ladder is comprised of rungs.
In stanza three, the speaker states, “I go down.” She narrates the experience of moving uncomfortable, “crippe[d]” by her flippers, and “crawl[ing] like an insect.” These images emphasize the smallness of the individual in the face of history, while continuing to develop the metaphor of scuba diving.
In stanza four, the speaker finally enters the water. She explains that although the water is dark, her “mask is powerful.” She is immersed in a different world, one where force and power are less important than in the regular world. Here, she suggests that the act of artistic exploration—even the exploration of a fraught history—must be done with curiosity and without force.
In stanza five, the speaker explains that “it is easy to forget” the purpose of her mission, once she is underwater. In stanza six, she clarifies: “I came to explore the wreck./ The words are purposes.” Here, it is clear that the wreck is both the poem’s shipwreck as well as the written records of history. Both these histories contain both “damage” and “treasures.” The speaker describes illuminating the wreck with a flashlight, looking at its “flank” for “something more permanent/ than fish or weed.” She thinks of history as an almost animal, living thing, and she wants to find its true essence—not just the way it appears now, aged and in the past.
Stanza seven moves into a more mythic kind of imagery, away from the realism of the dive. The speaker continues, “And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair/ streams black, the merman in his armored body.” Here, she identifies with mythic creatures of two genders, male and female. Taking on these different forms, half-human and half-something-else, the speaker begins to use the pronoun “we.”
Spanning stanzas seven and eight, the speaker imagines diving into the ship's hold and more fully identifying with the figure of the mermaid and merman, perhaps carved figures in the shipwreck: “I am she: I am he // whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes.” Continuing to use the pronoun “we,” she writes that these figures and the speaker herself have been “half-wedged and left to rot.” Reading metaphorically, she remarks that women as well as potential queer figures like the merman have been cast aside by history and left to rot.
In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker reaffirms the central themes of the poem, writing that this “we” has found its way back to the shipwreck with a knife, a camera, and “a book of myths/ in which/ our names do not appear.” Although they have been erased from history and left to decay, they are now doing the important work of recovering their own paths and making sense of both the violence they have suffered as well as the rich history they have in fact created, even if it is not yet written down. The work of the poet, then, is to recover and relay this history.
