“Diving into the Wreck” first appeared as the title poem in Adrienne Rich’s 1973 collection of the same name, which went on to share the win of the 1974 National Book Award for Poetry with Allen Ginsberg’s collection, Poetry for the Fall of America. Rich was a committed activist who worked in support of feminism, and she remains well regarded for her poems that examine issues related to the struggle for women’s liberation. “Diving into the Wreck” doesn’t explicitly deal with women’s experiences, but even so, the poem may productively be read as a feminist allegory for the recuperation of a lost or concealed truth about the self, women, or other groups of historically underrepresented people. The poem centers on an anonymous speaker who dives deep into the ocean until they arrive at the remains of an old shipwreck, which they proceed to examine. The speaker wants to search this wreck for truths that cannot otherwise be accounted for by “the book of myths” (line 1). As they proclaim, they came for “the [wreck] itself and not the myth” (line 63), and they wish to see first-hand what has been forgotten far below the ocean’s surface. With such first-hand knowledge, they can decide for themself what from the wreck might be worth recuperating.

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