- Write a 1-page single-spaced explication of 1 poem from Week 4, focusing on a specific way in which either a) the body is represented through imagery (if selected from Tuesday), or b) the voice/tone of the poem creates an idea of the body (if selected from Thursday). Post to blog by Noon 3/5. (See Tips for Explications under the 103 tab.)
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In the poem The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop, there are numerous accounts where the speaker uses imagery to represent the body. These comparisons have both negative and positive tones to them because, the speaker’s perspective towards the fish shifts numerous times throughout the poem. Using metaphors and similes to describe distinct characteristics of the fish, the speaker is able to discuss the beauty, terror, and uniqueness of this being.
In the beginning of the poem, the speaker views the fish as being inferior to the fisherman. He explains that the body of the fish has a homely, inflated complex which is bland. This body poses no threat to the fisherman; is not fighting back on the line but instead hangs heavily next to the boat, slowly and constantly flexing its gills. However when the speaker uses color to describe the fish, their attitude changes. They compare the fish’s skin to brown wallpaper, and the audience is drawn to think of papyrus from ancient civilizations. The fish itself is an ancient creature that has existed far longer than man, and persevered since prehistoric time. The skin of the fish tells the speaker a story; it is pattered like a beautiful rose; mysterious yet graceful. This uncertainty of the fish’s upbringing frightens the speaker, yet they are intrigued by this conundrum.
In order to gain more insight on the mystery posed by the fish, the speaker continues to deeply analyze its characteristics. He describes details that are easily overlooked; the lice clinging on to the fishes’ scales for dear life and the speckled barnacles which cloth the fish’s body. There is a pause, and a second of uncertainty when the speaker discusses the gills of the fish. Here they explain that the gills are breathing terrible oxygen (because the fish is out of water) and this frightens the speaker. They notice the speckled scarlet blood cake these gills and how these gills themselves are windows to the interior of the fish. They describe how these gills can “cut so badly”, hinting at the fact that these slits look like two parallel gashes and also that each time the fish darts through the water, its gills cut into this substance and turn it into breathable oxygen, giving the fish life. The pure strength of the gills fascinates the speaker, yet they are scared by the vulnerability of these organs when the fish is removed from its natural habitat.
The speaker’s curiously invites him to examine the windows of the fish and look to the fish’s interior. They talk about how the flesh of the fish are like delicate feathers, stuffed in between the various shapes and sizes of the bones of the fish. They again discuss the image of the flower, this time comparing the fish’s bladder to a gigantic blossoming peony. This sexual yet scientific image shows that the speaker understands the vigor of the fish; even though the fish may be inferior to man, it is still a living organism.
The most important characterizations the speaker gives to the fish are those describing specific facial features of this being. He first talks about how this fish is unable to stare back into the speaker’s gaze, suggesting that this being is incompetent of experiencing emotion. Yet he goes on to describe the beard like aspect of the fish’s chin; lined with fishing wire, each representing a medal of escape from previous fishermen. His lower lip and jaw were unable to be called a “lip” or “jaw” because they were so weapon-like; rugged and callused from the harsh battles this fish had fought.
Despite these vast observations and descriptive language the speaker uses, I found it most interesting that the speaker releases the fish because of non-bodily characteristics. Here, the speaker has a realization of beauty through the combination of manmade substance and that of nature. When the oil is mixing with water, the newly formed substance resembles a rainbow, and the speaker is overcome with emotion. He decides to let the creature go, realizing that their encounter itself was beautiful and did not need to conclude with the termination of one of the two parties. This realization comes through deep reflection and curiosity, yet the speaker is able to reach it because of the vast observations he makes about the fish’s body.
Within “In the Waiting Room” by Elizabeth Bishop, the speaker—perhaps the author herself—recounts a childhood memory of sudden awareness with a childlike voice. The speaker experiences an alarming moment of existential realization that they are one of many on this planet, in this universe, and that their bubble of existence is only one part of an unfathomably larger system.
The voice of the speaker is firstly established as that of a child. Entering the waiting room of the dentist’s office, the speaker notes the “grown-up people” and thus instantly distances themselves from these adults (Bishop 8). The speaker is not one of them. Then, the speaker comments in parentheses that they can “read” (Bishop 15). Given that the poem is set in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States of America, and in a healthcare facility, it is likely that most adults in that waiting room are wealthy enough to afford continuing their education as well as healthcare. Thus, these “grown-up people” are likely able to read (Bishop 8). The comment from the speaker that they can “read” further distances them from these adults (Bishop 15). It also more concretely alights that the speaker is a young child. Only for particularly young children is it so noteworthy to assure that they can read in this setting. In the second stanza, the speaker states that they are “three days” from “seven years old” and confirms that they are a child (Bishop 54, 55). The largely publicly understood diction and the repeatedly simple syntactical structure of the poetic phrases further support the identity of a child as the speaker. Two of the most obscure words in the poem are “rivulets” and “pith” (Bishop 20, 23). Otherwise, words commonly understood by English speakers, like “look” and “family”, dominate (Bishop 64, 78). Additionally, most of the sentences within the poem take the simple sentence structure consisting of one independent clause with a subject, a predicate, and sometimes a prepositional phrase. Examples of such simple sentences include “It got dark / early” and “I might have been embarrassed, / but wasn’t” (Bishop 6–7, 43–44). Such straightforward diction and syntax are typical of a child beginning to read and write. Thus, the speaker within “In the Waiting Room” is distinctly identified and typified as a child.
This identification of the speaker as a child ultimately functions to align the existential realization of the speaker with a candidly intense dread. After a National Geographic story about Polynesian cannibals shocks and horrifies the speaker, the speaker hears their aunt, amid her appointment with the dentist, cry out in pain. It is then that the speaker feels connected as one to her aunt, connected as one to the larger “them” that is the adults, but also disconnected from themselves (Bishop 62). The speaker is launched into an atmospheric place, “falling off / the round, turning world / into cold, blue-black space”, and is severed from their sensory grounding in the National Geographic magazine (Bishop 57–59). With the overwhelming curiosity and existential horror of a child first struck with seeing how small they are, how similar they are to others, the speaker drifts through questions of “How had I come to be here” and “Why should I be…me” (Bishop 86, 75–76). So viscerally consumed with dread is the speaker that the adults become fragmented parts and the waiting room becomes “bright / and too hot” and slides “beneath a big black wave” (Bishop 90–91, 92). The speaker floats in a place of dissociation, looking down on a smaller self and feeling strange, “‘unlikely’” (Bishop 85). With the sharply tactile yet dissociative experience of a childlike, candid dread, the speaker effectively recounts a moment of existentialism.
The quick snap back into reality following this moment illustrates how these moments haunt but pass us all as we live our daily lives, faced with only what we see but knowing a greater beyond.
Joel Machado
March 5, 2019
Response to “Summer” by Robin Coste Lewis
I have long wondered how someone or something can change so much, have so much stripped from them and their identity, yet be considered the same thing. In the poem “Summer” by Robin Coste Lewis, this very idea is explored in depth with the use of intense imagery. In Lewis’ poem, the speaker indicates having seen two snake skins appear on their porch, one day after the other. Then, the speaker continues on by mentioning how they peeled a banana. This comparison between the shedding of snakeskin and peeling of a banana is not only a direct reference, but the use of imagery here is two things literally changing in such significant ways, losing the shells that cover and identify them, yet still being the same thing. In the instance of the snake, it is still a snake regardless of whether or not it has that same layer of skin because we know that it is the creature which lives beneath the skin that matters. Likewise, whenever someone draws or imagines a banana, it is likely they will envision the bright, yellow skin, not the pale, white inside; however, both are the same thing and the inside is what is consumed and enjoyed by those who eat it.
I believe that in the ending lines when the speaker says that they are sharing with their son “what it feels like when something shows up at your door—twice—telling you what you already know,” this is just referencing how the imagery of the skinless snake still representing itself being clear enough the first time around, but sometimes we all need to step back and see things a second time. It is especially intriguing that there is a relationship between child and parent, in that the parent is teaching the child a lesson that they themselves learned, perhaps stubbornly, which explains the frustration with God and His range of creations. Delving further into His works, the speaker calls into question how God could create two opposing things: love and mosquitoes. Although on the surface this appears to be some kind of opposing argument, it actually makes a lot of sense when calling into question why and how a snake is so tightly bound with its skin, much like a banana is so attached with that pesky layer of yellow skin.
In “I Knew a Woman,” Theodore Roethke recounts the fabulous times he had with an unnamed woman and reminisces on what he’s lost in her. Roethke himself is the speaker and employs sensational words to describe his nameless, unidentified woman as gorgeous. He creates a distinct, passionate description of the woman across each stanza, and his descriptions even go further to establish the impact the woman has had on him.
Roethke’s poem travels through his time spent with the woman; in his first stanza, he introduces the woman. She is natural:speaks the language of the birds, ephemeral and gossamer in appearance, invites memories of Greek traditions, and is highly virtuous. The tone of Roethke’s first stanza posits that the woman is dramatically gorgeous, while also being incredibly difficult to understand. Nonetheless, her beauty leads him to his first indication that she actually completes his body, too. As an aside, Roethke mentions he could fill himself and others “cheek to cheek” on her aura.
Roethke’s next two stanzas establish the woman’s relationship with Roethke. She complements him, and he in turn learns about her extensively. In the second stanza, the woman is a mentor and simultaneously a companion, from whom Roethke grazes and also makes “prodigious,” remarkable movements. Roethke showers his woman with praise in both these stanzas, and in the third stanza begins to accelerate her movements. In dancing and fleeting, she is ever beautiful, described as having a “dazzl[ing]” effect on her viewers. She is no longer conjoined with Roethke, though, and such admiring descriptions give way to melancholy.
In spite of depicting her persona and body as beautiful, we learn that Roethke’s woman is no longer a fixture in his life. In his last stanza, he depicts less the woman’s body than the mark she left; the woman “cast a shadow” behind her, and he is no longer a complete and excitable figure but instead an assortment of “old bones.” Roethke’s positioning of the bodies against one another at the end stands in somber contrast to the shining, glowing, youthful bodies that once were together.
In “Poem to My Litter,” Max Ritvo gives a stark and emotional tribute to the mice utilized for research during his cancer treatment. These mice were used to study the possible efficacy of certain chemotherapy drugs on his tumors so that his body was not the testing ground; instead he now has dozens of miniature selves, his “Maxes” (named for himself), that serve as surrogate bodies for his cancer cells to ravage even as they destroy his own. Ritvo’s tone is very blunt; his sentences are short, drawn out between lines but never extending to a long metaphor or image. Because of this, the poem is incredibly concise: every phrase is laden with information necessary for the flow of the poem; nothing is superfluous. The poem’s free verse helps to support this, as there is no need to attempt to fit the narrative presented into some structure that could favor more flowery or traditionally ‘poetic’ language. Ritvo has created a poem of couplets, free verse pairs of lines that draw the reader through his story with lingering thoughts at the end of lines to unite them.
The seemingly stark structure of the poem allows Ritvo to infuse deep emotions into his words. Though they may not appear in the tonality of the poem, each phrase draws the reader closer to the speaker, later revealed to be Ritvo himself, and to his tale of hope and destruction. By the last of the eighteen stanzas, one feels an almost kinship with Ritvo’s mice, a sense of desire for their wellbeing even as they are being exposed to AIDS, cancer cells and possibly deadly chemotherapy drugs. Ritvo infuses the poem with a slight irony that creates an undercurrent to the otherwise straightforward nature of the poem; his built relationship with these mice becomes a source of dark humor, especially in stanza fourteen, where Ritvo writes: “They’re like children you’ve traumatized / and tortured so they won’t let you visit” (27-28). This brief moment of ironic humor acts as a transition within the poem, departing from the deeply factual and becoming what the title implied: a poem for the mice themselves.
The final four stanzas are directed to the Maxes, inextricably linking Ritvo and the mice through imagery beyond the physical traits that they now share. Instead of personifying the mice, Ritvo brings himself to them, referring to his hair as fur and implying knowledge of life within a cage, just as they now live. He has become their surrogate body, one large, scared mouse waiting to see what the tumor will do to him, unable to fight it on his own like they once did. It is ironic that Ritvo himself is weaker than the mice, as his frame harbors the tumors in “any bed / the vast body turns down,” even as the mouse bodies fight so hard against the implant that they must be give “AIDS so they’ll harbor [his] genes” (15-16, 22). The poem’s final line unites Ritvo and the Maxes into one subject: “Which is what we want. Trust me” (36). This is the first and only time that they are united as one, despite their many connections; prior to this it has always been the humans and the mice as separate categories, surrogates without truly being one. The direct address of the final four stanzas bring Ritvo closer than he had been to the mice, allowing him to finally close the slight gap between them in a hope for peace.
In her poem “What the Living Do”, Marie Howe constructs a speaker who is delivering an elegy to a person that has passed away. To the object of the poem, who has left, the speaker, who is living, complains about the unsatisfying, humanistic desire, disturbing disorganization happening in everyday life. While passing time dealing with troubling matters, the speaker, unobstructedly, expresses the yearning of the lost one, also, reminds all: despite losing, we are still living. Thus, Howe suggests a distinctive way to embrace the loss in life, to remember the past, to continue to live.
The addressee of the poem is clear as the name, Johnny, takes the first place in the beginning. The first six lines of the poem concern the troubling errands needed to be done yet not done, in the life of the speaker: the“clogged kitchen”, “fell-down utensil” and “crusty dishes”. With the calling of Johnny in the first place and the following complaining about the daily matters, the speaker distinctly engages in the conversation with Johnny. In the third line “This is the everyday we spoke of”, the inclusive term “we”further implies the one-to-one message-delivery from the speaker to Johnny. Besides, bringing up “the everyday we spoke of”, the speaker conveys the shared intimacy between the two. But the vivid conversation happened only in the past when Johnny was there; at present, the speaker is having a monologue. Implicitly, Howe conveys the speaker’s yearning of the past, the days when Johnny and “I” “spoke”. Yet, the pattern of the first six lines-the name of a person, the reflected daily conversations between the addressee and “I”-displays the common events relatable for the readers. Howe, thusly, also allows the readers to join the journey of flashback about the past, between their lost ones and themselves.
In the following lines, the speaker’s tone retreats itself from the flashback and invites the other livings into the conversation, shifting at the line “This is what the living do”. While the speaker seems to list a series of daily events in his/her personal life, he/she is also speaking for the living, including the readers, as those are what we also encounter. Pushing further, in the three repetitions of “we” in line 11 and 12, the speaker pushes further to cover all the living’s voice. Therefore, Howe, provides an immersive experience for the readers within the poem.
In lines 13 and 14, on the one hand, the poem seems to silence all the voices but the speaker’s, as “I” comes back again with his/her scene. Walking through the chilly weather that belongs to the winter, after all the troublesome events took place, the speaker sees the reflected self through the window glass of the video store, and comes to the realization of life: to embrace loss with remembrance, to embrace life as imperfection-it is not always pleasing, but worth living. On the other hand, as “I” am the only one that is speaking, the poem allows each individual to engage their own voice. Meanwhile, while individual follows the “I” statement, the message— “I am living. I remember you”—resonates around each individual’s mind.
The speaker recounts what the living do throughout the poem: “waiting”, “driving”, “ parking”, “dropping”, “breaking the bags”, “hurrying”, “spilling the coffee” and “ slamming”; and these, are, troubling and tiring. For the speaker, as one of the living, life, consisted of unpleasant things, is just, a mess. Yet in the meantime, for Johnny, these are” yearning”. What the living sees as tiring, is what the non-living long for. Following the physical activities, the speaker adds the unsatisfying humanistic desires to the list of the living: “We want the spring to come and the winter to pass./ We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.” The rotation of seasons is a natural law that we the living can not manipulate. The people we are eager to hear from do not always respond to our needs. Unrequited desiring is what the living have to do. The speaker who tells about the unhappiness of the living, at the last four lines, highlights, what the living, last but not least, is doing: “cherishing” oneself, living oneself, while remembering the past. Thus, Howe, with the echo of the rhyme “-ing” throughout the whole poem, inserts her encouraging voice for the readers, the living—the loss is painful, but please remember, we are still living.
Usman Ghani
Postscript
3/4/19
Seamus Heaney’s speaker in “Postscript” uses an all present, knowing tone to convey the message of being present with a moment and living in the now within a place of beauty. The speaker starts off the poem with the words “And some time make the time to drive out west” (1) as to give out advice to the reader. The tone here is calm and perceptive; one of a person who has lived their years and knows the true value of appreciating life contrasted with just spending it. The speaker later describes names a place and states when and how it is at its pristine condition while the weather is nice. This attention to detail adds experience to the speaker and establishes them as a knowledgeable and well-traveled being. The vivid imagery of the glittering ocean, swans, and lake add to this experienced characterization and knowing tone which helps the speaker convince the audience through ethos. By describing the scenic landscapes and painting a picture of the world beyond the rushed car rides and hurried past highways, the speaker evokes a fear of missing out into the audience.
The tone switches in the twelfth-thirteenth line, when the speaker says “ Useless to think, you’ll park and capture it/ More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there” (12-13). The tone swaps the calm, descriptive voice of the speaker with a more pronounced, authoritative one. The speaker is clear in his viewpoints, that the world i.e the swans, lakes, oceans, and the beauty of County Clare are one in a lifetime opportunities, they whiz by as soon as one drives past them but they cannot be captured if one does choose to slow down. That is the perceived beauty of County Clare, and how it matches with the tone of the author as the authoritative tone is in line with the stern / unforgiving nature of the Country Clare which will slip through the observer’s eyes like sand through fingers. The speaker’s firm tone echoes the firm reality of how time passes a person, which cannot be won back through any means whatsoever. The speaker does make a note about how familiar and strange things choose to bypass the beauty of the county but a quick glance can show the majestic secrets, it hides and all it requires is a little bit of attentiveness on the observer’s behalf.
Alexander White
3/5
Response to “To His Coy Mistress”
In Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy the Mistress” the body is represented as a beautiful, priceless prize, although unfortunately transient. The speaker urges his mistress to act with urgency and to claim bodily joys before time snatches them away.
The poem has a consistent structure of rhyming couplets, with lines of variable length. The form is consistent throughout, but with two lines that are indented. These two indented lines break the poem up into thirds. The first third describes an idealized world of infinite possibilities for two lovers. The next third is a sharp break from that back into limited reality, the reality of death and decay. The final third of the poem is a call to action, a urgent imploration to love now, while one still can.
The poem begins with a leisurely contemplation of an ideal world for two lovers, one with infinite time and possibilities:
“Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.”
The speaker imagines a world wherein not only is there time and freedom enough for a couple to do whatever they so desire, but where they have the time to sit down and contemplate it. Marvell depicts a lover’s utopia of absolute leisure. In this imagined perfection, the speaker says, “My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empire’s and more slow;”. Love is represented as a plant which might grow incomprehensibly vast and mighty were it given fertile ground to take root in.
Marvell turns from this vision of eternal life with his first indented line, which marks a shift, “But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;”. He personifies time like a Greek God, depicting it as some sapient force that will chase close behind him until the bitter end, when it finally catches up. Time does its iniquities to matter, to the physical body. Marvell viscerally describes worms ravaging the body of the mistress after her death, after her beauty has been stolen:
“Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,”
The body is impermanent, and that is an inescapable fact. But Marvell does not become melancholic about that fact, he does not dwell on it. He states the reality of death, without becoming overwrought. He moves straightaway to a carpe diem, with his third and final indented line.
“Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
…
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”
The youthful body is compared to the natural image of morning dew. Like morning dew, the mistress’s body is new, fragile, and beautiful. The soul is compared to a fire, a fire inextricably linked with the body, a blaze so fiery it bursts out of the mistress’s pores. Marvell concludes with a call for the lovers to live out their ephemeral lives so fiercely they make the very sun move.
In the poem “In the Waiting Room” Elizabeth Bishop uses both imagery through the speaker reading the National Geographic magazines and voices to help convey the fear of the speaker growing up. As the speaker reads the magazine while waiting for her Aunt Consuelo at the dentist, she comes in contact with a variety of photos allowing her to see into the future. One of the photos was of Osa and Martin Johnson who is an American husband and wife known for a documentary they created on their adventures to exotic lands. The imagery of this photo allows the speakers to realize that one day she may be married but that she too will be exposed to exotic lands of her own, whether it be in actual travel or overcoming the challenges of marriage. The speaker later says that “their breast were horrifying.” It appears that the speaker is too young to have hit puberty and is still in the stage were breast gross her out. Some of the images the speaker encounters are that of a “dead man sling on a pole” and “naked women with necks wound round and round with wires.” These images are reminders that even though the girl may not yet see the breast and marriage as beautiful parts of growing up, there are also scary, dangerous parts of growing up and that she will have to remain cautious about. The speakers finally realize that the photos of the National Geographic had triggered something in her that lead her to think about the future. She realizes what her future would really look when her Aunt Conseulo finished her appointment and calls her name. “What took me completely by surprise was that it was me: my voice, in my mouth. Without thinking at all I was my foolish aunt,”
Earlier the speaker mentions that her Aunt Conseulo was a “foolish, timid woman.” The realization now that she is indeed like her aunt scares her of the future because she is worried that she will end up like her aunt and maybe even some of those photos in the National Geographic. After this worry comes upon the speaker tries to bring herself back to reality through her own voice. The speaker reminds herself that she is only seven years old and that “you are an I, you are an Elizabeth.” The speaker is trying to re-center her thoughts and remind herself that she is different from her Aunt Conseulo. She is Elizabeth and will have a different path they here Aunt and then those in the National Geographic magazine because everyone has their own destiny. The speaker is struggling with the images of her being similar to her Aunt and with what she saw in the National Geographic. As the speaker leaves the waiting room, she realizes the uncertainty of her future “it was sliding beneath a big black wave.” The speaker is still a young girl and has a long time until she is a woman and has to worry about the reality of growing up. Until then the uncertainty of her future and her life as a woman remains a “black wave” that she will slowly have to pull away at as she grows older.
William Oppenheim
Tone/voice creating a body
Response to Morgan Parker’s: If you are Over Staying Woke
Morgan Parker’s If you are Over Staying Woke creates an image of a body and mind that is becoming more and more frenzied as the poem continues. The structure of this poem, being made up of many lines consisting of anywhere from one to four words per line, adds to the anxiety and erratic thinking being experienced by this body. Without any outside knowledge, we are led to believe that this is a person of color living in the 21st century do to the mentioning of remembering “what the world is like for white people,” and how they only “swipe right sometimes,” referencing the modern dating app, Tinder.
The form of this poem is truly unique, but works perfectly in this context, as it allows for a reading that resembles the thoughts that race through one’s head when panic strikes. Written with no line breaks and very short lines, this poem allows the reader to focus on the importance of each line, presenting this anxious, erratic, and repetitive behavior in a way that creates a more clear picture of the speaker. Writing the poem like this creates a jumpy tone that would not have existed had the poem not been written in this way.
The speaker in this poem is most likely a young, modern, American person of color, who is of a progressive point of view, as they mention “never punctuate the president,” most likely in reference to Donald Trump. The tone of this poem starts out pretty normal, as it talks about the routines that the speaker goes through in a day, like watering the plants, taking pills, and flossing teeth. The tone of this poem shifts at the word “otherwise,” switching from what may seem like an average description of a daily routine and thought process for an average young American person of color, to something more serious and anxiety provoking. Before the word “otherwise,” there are lots of sentences and periods, creating pauses, calmness, and normality for the reader. After this word however, which occurs about halfway into the poem, there are no more periods or pauses, not even when the poem ends, resulting in an erratic and emotional reading of this second half of the poem that adds to the frenzy.
This poem uses tone to depict a body who is trying to live a normal life, and wants to be happy, but is struggling to do so because of a society that holds them down. The tone becomes almost angry when the speaker talks about having sex with people who don’t care about each other, and then continues rambling on repeatedly about things like “skipping funerals,” water, and fire. In sum, I believe all of this is done to present a picture of a body who is trying to wear a positive shell, but on the inside is struggling deeply to remain calm with themselves and the society they live in, and that this could be a microcosm for other Americans.
In this 20th Century poem titled, “Diving into the Wreck”, the author, Adrienne Rich, writes of a diver’s experience trekking down to a shipwreck as well as the feelings and emotions that this expedition evokes in the speaker. The poem is written in ten stanzas that are about the same length (10 lines). The writer deviates from this pattern of ten lines a few times throughout the poem, showing that he is writing, in some cases, only what he thinks is necessary rather than filling lines to conform to a certain poetry form. Additionally, each stanza embodies a particular theme or style and these themes change drastically across certain stanzas.
The opening stanza is utilized fully as it is an introduction to the speaker as well as the writing style of the author. Relating to the theme of the body, Rich writes, “I put on the body-armor of black rubber”. When I first read this line, the idea of a scuba suit representing armor for battle was very eye-opening. It seems that the speaker is preparing for battle although he is just preparing to scuba dive. Thus, I believe that the speaker is not only exploring a shipwreck, but also reflecting on some metaphorical shipwreck in his or her life. After talking about the rubber armor, Rich writes, “the absurd flippers”. On one side, the speaker is relating the expedition to battle while simultaneously acknowledging the comedic element of the appearance of a diver in his or her suit. This shows us that the writer is light-hearted and is able to express a number of emotions through this one experience.
Throughout the poem, Rich includes vivid imagery in efforts to connect elements of diving to human instinct and emotion. In the third stanza of the poem, it reads, “I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me”. This line explains that although the diver is getting closer to the shipwreck/metaphorical tragedy, the oxygen is immersing his lungs and forcing life to continue. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word immerse as “the action of dipping or plunging into a liquid”. I found this interesting because although the body is immersed in the dark ocean, the speaker states that the true immersion is that of the oxygen to the speaker’s body. Metaphorically, I understand this line as a declaration that the positive, lively parts of life outweigh the suffering.
Another line that resonated with me was when the speaker stated, “I crawl like an insect down the ladder”. I found it very interesting that the writer used the word ‘insect’ to refer to a human. I interpreted this as an intentional choice by the writer to relate the human to a tiny insect while going down to the shipwreck. Metaphorically, the writer is conveying the idea that one human is so insignificant when in the presence of these large-scale tragedies and representations of suffering. Similarly, the writer states at one point, “I am she. I am he”. This represents the idea that the immense tragedy outweighs the significance of any details of a single person.
Rich begins the poem with a very smooth first line, “First having read the book of myths”. It seems that this ‘book of myths’ must be important to the message because the poem is about scuba diving which doesn’t relate closely to any book of myths. Additionally, this line is one of very few throughout the poem that is written in iambic tetrameter. In fact, the only lines in the entire poem that I found to appear intentionally as iambic tetrameter is the first and the last few lines of the poem. What do these lines have in common? Well, both of these passages include a reference to this “book of myths”. Assuming that this literal experience of diving for shipwrecks is a metaphor for revisiting times of tragedy in one’s life, it would be reasonable to believe that the “book of myths” is a metaphor for the desire to revisit times of human suffering. Ultimately, I believe that Rich is sending the message that suffering and tragedy exists in everyone’s life and there is something desirable about revisiting these tragedies for emotional closure.