Adrienne Rich Poem Analysis

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Poem Analysis – Adrienne Rich An analysis of four chosen stanzas from Adrienne Rich’s poem Diving into the Wreck. Stanza One: As this stanza establishes the poem’s first ideas of symbolism and meaning, it is important and crucial to be included in the analysis. The first stanza is like a preparing stanza explaining the preparation for the dive, which features in the fourth stanza. It is important to establish how the whole poem is a metaphor, symbolising something of much greater importance in the world and to the author. In this particular poem Rich seems to have two main ideas that she conveys: diving into herself and diving into history. These two readings are not unusual for Rich with her strong political views, which were controversial at the time of her writing. The first of the two, diving into oneself, is how I would prefer to read and understand the poem as it has much more depth and as the first line quotes, ‘first having read the book of myths’ we can establish that the book of myths represents the past and the inner history oneself, or memories. The second line goes on to quote ‘and loaded the camera’, this symbolises the keeping of memories, and a record of events taken and taking place, as this is the preparation for the ‘dive’ and the author is taking the camera to record and keep the memory of the dive. The reason the author would record what has happened is perhaps related back to the ‘book of myths’ and the recording of history and past events, as a memory of what has happened. The third line relates more to the reading of diving into oneself and it quotes ‘…checked the edge of the knife-blade’, representing one’s mind, or intellect. With the task of diving into one’s wrecked past memories to discover a dark mystery beneath the serene cover, which is symbolised as the ocean, it would be thought wise to have a sharp intellect, and so the
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