Adrienne Rich: "Storm Warnings" & "Diving into the Wreck"

Storm Warnings

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.
(1951)

This poem - in relation to my themes falls nicely into the area concerning the outsider. The speaker seems to represent a type of person (i.e. people who live in troubled regions) and be defining this difference, sets herself apart from others. Although she is identified with a group, she is the sole speaker - the effect is that she imagines and knows others are troubled, but the feeling the poem conveys is more of isolation. Knowing the storm is coming does not prevent its coming - foreknowledge is useless. The speaker does not rely on others during the storm but does what little he or she can do - close oneself in with shutters and hope things arent a wreck when the storm subsides. The parallel of the storm of nature and the storm of the heart is notable for the locational difference: there is a storm without and a storm within - How does one shut out what is inside? Might not the speaker be including everyone (These are the things we have learned to do)? It could be. And this inclusion would still have the same result - the tone here is not "we are all in this together" it's more "We all have interior storms and we each have to learn to weather them." In this reading we are all outsiders to each other. I don't find any overtly religious feeling in the poem, though maybe spiritual. I suppose the storm could represent one's vision of an arbitrary god who is ultimately in control, for there is certainly something beyond the person who is controlling the storm whether it be nature or God.

There is little resemblance to Campbell's idea of the hero - although a passage of time has occurred - the we of the poem have learned how to deal with living in troubled regions - there has been a sense of self-discovery.

Diving into the Wreck

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 sway 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 breasts 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 wayback to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
(1972)

It's hard to know where to begin with a poem this rich. But I will try. In terms of the Cambellian hero, there is much here. First, myth surrounds the wreck - the diver wants to dive down to the reality behind the myth. The diver's journey is not unlike the journey of the hero and by the end of the poem - the return - the diver bestows on us, the reader the boon of knowledge and experience. The diver encompasses man and women by the ambiguity of the diving suit - the diver is us. The descent down the ladder from human air to the deep is the begining of the journey (c.f. Beowulf's descent into the swamp to destroy Grendel's mother). The point of the journey is clear - the diver came to see the wreck. It is beautiful in its worn, skeletal state. The journey is one of the soul - the diver encourages us to go back to our wrecks and survey the damage after time has passed. They will still be there for they are permanent. Our journey back may occur for different reasons - we boldly face it or we fearfully return to it in a dependent way.