Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck.”   I suppose you could say that Adrienne Rich’s iconic poem “Diving into the Wreck” is about scuba diving, but that’s like saying Homer’s Odyssey is about a trip.   Sure the narrator is a diver. She – or he – “put[s] on / the body-armor of black rubber / the absurd flippers / the grave and awkward mask” and prepares to descend.   But the narrator is not a typical diver. For one thing, the narrator is alone, no one on deck to supervise or assist with the dive. Even the ladder that goes down the side of the schooner would go unnoticed to the unknowing eye. As the narrator says, this is no Jacques Cousteau expedition.   The narrator, however, is intrepid and steps down the ladder, “[r]ung after rung” until the ocean “begin[s].” Leaving behind the familiar world of oxygen, “the blue light / the clear atoms / of our human air,” the narrator goes deep into an unknown world.   In the blue, then green, then black water, the narrator quickly realizes