“even you, fellow-creature, sister
sitting across from me, dark with love,
working like me to pick apart
working with me to remake
this trailing knitted thing, this cloth of darkness
this woman's garment, trying to save the skein”

( )

Finally got the combination of time and nerve to take on this landmark of American poetry, and was rewarded with a glimpse into the infinite. This book is ferocious in the way that early P.J. Harvey is ferocious: both feminine and feminist, full of rage and mysticism and sadness, a fearless, avenging voice of the dispossessed, a wail of freedom and grief. What strikes me about the poetry here is that it manages to be polemical, in a way, while also being effortlessly metaphorical; in other words, it has, I think, real organic political force, without the clumsiness that mars almost all such didactic verse. "A woman made this film / against / the law / of gravity," Rich writes; Diving into the Wreck is equally powerful and free. A classic. ( )

Rape

There is a cop who is both prowler and father:
he comes from your block, grew up with your brothers,
had certain ideals.
You hardly know him in his boots and silver badge,
on horseback, one hand touching his gun.

You hardly know him but you have to get to know him:
he has access to machinery that could kill you.
He and his stallion clop like warlords among the trash,
his ideals stand in the air, a frozen cloud
from between his unsmiling lips.

And so, when the time comes, you have to turn to him,
the maniac’s sperm still greasing your thighs,
your mind whirling like crazy. You have to confess
to him, you are guilty of the crime
of having been forced.

And you see his blue eyes, the blue eyes of all the family
whom you used to know, grow narrow and glisten,
his hand types out the details
and he wants them all
but the hysteria in your voice pleases him best.

You hardly know him but now he thinks he knows you:
he has taken down you worst moment
on a machine and filed it in a file.
He knows, or thinks he knows, how much you imagined;
he knows, or thinks he knows, what you secretly wanted.

He has access to machinery that could get you put away;
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
your details sound like a portrait of your confessor,
will you swallow, will you deny them, will you lie your way home? ( )

Rich is one of those poets whose works I never tire of. Whether read quickly or drifted through, the poems resonate with her skill and with worthwhile meaning. Maybe even more than in her other collections, the poems in Diving into the Wreck allow for both fast surface-level reads that are themselves enjoyable, but welcome readers who'll be willing to live with them and re-read them. There's such depth to each of them, and such care with language, that they bear up under each further moment a reader spends with them. And yet, young readers and casual readers will still find them worth their time.

All told, this is a wonderful collection, and one I'd absolutely recommend to any poetry reader. ( )

Read for national poetry day-

first time reading adrienne rich; she's a brilliant fucking woman. it's so nice to be reminded that there's a whole world of feminist poetry out there that doesn't exist in self-serving, nihilistic tumblr form (and adrienne herself has said that one of poetry's obligations is to not be lazy like that lol). gonna have to re-read this in bits because there are all these layers.

favourites so far: "diving into the wreck" gender roles? (the thing I came for / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth), "song" because of its relevance - loneliness as independence and freedom (you're wondering if I'm lonely / OK then, yes, I'm lonely . . . / if I'm lonely / it must be the loneliness / of waking first, of breathing), "from the prison house" for its statement on ignorance (This eye / is not for weeping / its vision / must be unblurred / though tears are on my face / its intent is clarity / it must forget / nothing) ( )