Diving into the Wreak by Adrienne Rich?

Question

I have to write 5 dialectical responses on this poem,

but I don't understand it that much,

can someone just help explain it?

First having read the book of myths,

and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,

I put on

the body-armor of black rubber

the absurd flippers

the grave and awkward mask.

I am having to do this

not like Cousteau with his

assiduous team

aboard the sun-flooded schooner

but here alone.

There is a ladder.

The ladder is always there

hanging innocently

close to the side of the schooner.

We know what it is for,

we who have used it.

Otherwise

it is a piece of maritime floss

some sundry equipment.

I go down.

Rung after rung and still

the oxygen immerses me

the blue light

the clear atoms

of our human air.

I go down.

My flippers cripple me,

I crawl like an insect down the ladder

and there is no one

to tell me when the ocean

will begin.

First the air is blue and then

it is bluer and then green and then

black I am blacking out and yet

my mask is powerful

it pumps my blood with power

the sea is another story

the sea is not a question of power

I have to learn alone

to turn my body without force

in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget

what I came for

among so many who have always

lived here

swaying their crenellated fans

between the reefs

and besides

you breathe differently down here.

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

the thing I came for:

the wreck and not the story of the wreck

the thing itself and not the myth

the drowned face always staring

toward the sun

the evidence of damage

worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty

the ribs of the disaster

curving their assertion

among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.

And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair

streams black, the merman in his armored body.

We circle silently

about the wreck

we dive into the hold.

I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes

whose b*****s still bear the stress

whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies

obscurely inside barrels

half-wedged and left to rot

we are the half-destroyed instruments

that once held to a course

the water-eaten log

the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear.

Answer 1

General:

The speaker scuba dives to a wreck.  She feels estranged and alone by the preparation, enters into the wrecked ship as though it were a body, and finds a new common identity in both the ship's body and those who died there.

1st Stanza:

The speaker has read the guide book for the wreck, loaded film in her camera, and put the required scuba knife in her belt.  She has tried to prepare herself for the dive by putting on the wetsuit ("armor"), but ends up feeling strange and alone, not at all like Jacques Cousteau, a famous scuba diver and sea explorer.

2nd - 3rd Stanzas:

The speaker descends the ladder on the side of the boat to begin her dive.  She proceeds from "human air" to an "insect", losing personality as she goes deeper.

4th Stanza:

She is now alone ("I have to learn alone").  This is a different world, and her body is linked intrinsically to the scuba suit, making it difficult to know who and what she is.

5th-6th Stanza:

She muses, confused on why she has come here.  She finds purpose by returning to her preparations, and, notably, by referring for the first time to the actual wreck.  She uses the word "flank", which sets up the overall "wreck as body / body as wreck" metaphor which the author extends in the next stanza.

7th Stanza:

She comes face to face with what she had only heard about and read about: the wreck of the ship.  The "wreck as body" metaphor continues with "the drowned face" and "the ribs of the disaster".

8th-10th Stanza:

By entering into the body of the wrecked ship, the speaker finds a common identity ("I am she: I am he", "We are, I am, you are") with the dead, and so again with the normal, living persona she lost during the descent.