Upon reading up on Adrienne Rich and learning that she was a lesbian I came to the conclusion that Diving into the Wreck is a poem that tells the story of exploration and finding of one’s self through the use of symbolism. The poem talks about a diver who is searching the sea for a wreck and any potential treasure it may contain.                                                      The sea here represents the mind and the diver is diving into a sea of memories, the wreck possible representing a specific bad memory or experience. “First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black” as the diver delves deeper and deeper into the memories it may be harder to remember older memories or that these memories are dark and painful. However not all the memories are bad, “And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here” the diver here is reminiscing about the different people the diver has encountered and the events they have shared together.                                         “I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail” if the wreck does represents a bad memory/experience then the purpose of exploring this particular memory is to go through it, study it, and learn from it. By learning from it, the diver gains the treasure, the knowledge that might help if the diver were to go experience the situation once again.                                                                                                                                       With the knowledge that Rich was a lesbian and knowing that being gay in her time period was no easy thing lead me to think that the “book of myths” mentioned in the poem refers to one’s true self. “The thing I came for:the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth”the diver was here looking through the memories to find his true self who he buried deep in his mind and to salvage it and to bring it up back to the surface.