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Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 is an anthology of poems written by Adrienne Rich. Published in 1973, it won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
Diving into the Wreck, a collection of exploratory and often angry poems, split the 1974 National Book Award for Poetry with Allen Ginsberg, The Fall of America.
The poem opens as the speaker prepares for a deep-sea dive and then follows the speaker's exploration of a shipwreck. Rich was a leading feminist poet, and many critical interpretations view the poem as an extended metaphor relating to the struggle for women's rights and liberation.
‘Diving into the Wreck’ by Adrienne Rich is a hauntingly beautiful poem about the erasure of women from the historical record. In the first lines of this piece, the speaker, who addresses her life through the first-person perspective, describes preparing for a dive.
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).
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. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed
“Diving into the Wreck” is the title piece of a poetry collection for which Rich received the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
