"Diving Into the Wreck" for Poetry Month ( A Poem by Adrienne Rich)

 

 

(Photo by M. Bencivengo, at Vermilion Lighthouse and Maritime Museum at Lake Erie)

 

One of my favorite old-time all-time poets and one of my favorite poems. However, I do not quite resonate with lines of seeing the thing itself and not the story or the myth of the thing itself, because I love mythology and folklore and for me it is the metaphor that leads to really seeing the thing itself. With the symbolic life, the mind reads and speaks in metaphors. Yet, I love this poem; as much as she says it is not the story or the myth but the thing itself, I think she is telling a story nonetheless and mentions the myth of the mermaid in taking a dive. She cannot seem to help but be a poet of story and the metaphor of myth even as she is looking for the actual "thing itself." I love the imagery in this poem and its description of going down into the deep. It also reminds me of depth psych, as I once posted on my old depth psych website.

 

But then there is how in the modern era the word myth is often used to mean anything/whatever is false in a popular cultural sense, like "Oh, that's not true: that's just a myth." And in that sense person could be looking for the truth to something in looking for "the thing itself." Perhaps this is also timely in a time when, in the news or on the streets, so many people are talking about people ignoring or denying the science of things.

 

Here is the link to Rich reading the poem:

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c03sWpt62vw