The theme that plays on throughout the poem is illusion. Many poems have that sense of illusion, but I think this poem does especially. It is a confessional poem so the actual meaning of the poem is going to be something personal or a topic that was rarely talked about at the time. I think a quote that really shows the illusion within the poem is "There is a ladder. The ladder is always there helping innocently close to the side of the schooner. We all know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it's a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment (2)." Without research or digging deeper into our own minds, it's not straightforward and ultimately, it never really will be. All those objects can have different meanings to different people. That goes for the entire poem as well and I think that's part of the illusion, no one will really ever know without asking Adrienne Rich what the poem was actually about.
I researched about Adrienne Rich and this poem as a project and through that research I gained knowledge about confessional poetry. I learned that it's usually about a personal experience and Rich was a mother of three boys before the age of 30 (Poets.org 3). After that period in her life she began to write about the Vietnam war and women's rights (3). Some will argue that the poem is about gender identity or just the struggle of identity in society. It makes sense because women weren't really allowed to be outspoken and they didn't really have much of a role in society at the time the poem was written. It was also unusual for women to speak out publicly about wanting to have a better and bigger role in society. Also at that time it would've been completely outrageous for a woman to speak about gender identity.
The quote above could take on so many meanings depending on who's reading, but personally I think it's talking about the ladder being the choice to be outspoken. The ladder is close to the schooner, the boat, because they're all in the 'same boat' and some people in the boat have chose innocently to climb down that ladder and be outspoken and that ladder leads to wreck of what comes from being outspoken as a woman. Without the ladder being used, it's just there until someone else decides that they no longer want to sit around and they want to fight for equality with the rest in the wreck.
With this thinking about the poem it gives too much definition to the poem. I think poems are about having that sense of illusion, that way there can't be just one strict meaning, even if the author intended one, because it doesn't appeal to a wide variety of readers. Confessional poetry is about things that aren't talked about publicly, feelings, death, dark subjects and no one ever really knows what one is going though so even Diving into the Wreck can be thought of in some other way with some other situation and that's okay because that's poetry. Even with knowledge of Rich's past I think it's okay to take her poem that she intended to have a meaning for and put your own meaning to it. The meaning doesn't even have to be a woman experience. Some writers are working hard to make confessional poetry not so feminine. I think that it is important because some readers generalize confessional poetry which isn't fair to the writers who don't fit into that generalization.
Baym, Nina. The Norton anthology of American literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Print.
"Adrienne Rich." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 02 Aug. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017
I appreciate how you use the information from your literary context project to help interpret this poem. I think it's really interesting to think about confessional poetry beyond gender, and opening the genre up to folks of all genders. Some folks historically looked down on confessional poetry, but it seems to speak important truths. It's interesting to think about how/why she chooses to give us a ladder down into a wreck rather than up somewhere more positive--she really wants us to see the wreck.
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