Imager 11210

I enjoyed the imagery, “I stroke the beam of my lamp / slowly along the flank / of something more permanent / than fish or weed.” Addrienne Rich uses this imagery to show that the diver’s light is running across something manmade and foreign to this underwater world. She adds to this sense of foreign (not belonging) earlier in the poem by using images like, “the body-armor of black rubber / the absurd flippers / the grave and awkward mask.” Calling a wetsuit a body-armor of black rubber makes the reader feel the awkwardness and out-of-placedness that is a wet suit in the ocean. Calling the flippers absurd shows the reader how awkward they are, and adds later “my flippers cripple me / I crawl like an insect down the ladder” to reinforce the whole awkwardness of the SCUBA equipment. “The grave and awkward mask” further reinforces into the reader’s mind that this equipment is foreign, unnatural, and strange. I chose to write about the imagery in this poem because, I am a SCUBA diver myself, have been for nine years, and this was an interesting way of describing the equipment that goes along with the sport. When I go diving, I always think everyone looks funny in all their gear, but I never stopped to think about how out of place we were and how awkwardly absurd our outfits were. I also enjoyed how she described the figureheads of the sunken boat; “whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes,” ties back together the image of the light finding something “more permanent than fish or weed.”

Body-armor of black rubber

Grave and awkward mask

Absurd flippers

Sun-flooded schooner

Hanging innocently

Piece of maritime floss

Blue light

Clear Atoms

Crawl like an insect down the ladder

My mask is powerful

Swaying their crenellated fans

I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed

Threadbare beauty

Ribs of disaster

Tentative Haunters

Mermaid/Merman