The Book of Myths
We'll start off with a big one here, maybe the most important and the most mysterious symbol in the poem. This book is the first and last image in the poem, which is a good way to know that it real...
The Knife
Each one of the objects the diver carries seems important in a different way. A knife can be a tool, or it can be a weapon. In both cases though, it shows that the diver might expect things to get...
The Ladder
Did you notice how much airtime this ladder gets? Rich gives it almost twenty lines. This makes us think that there much be a lot of meaning attached to it. If this poem is about diving, why do we...
The Ocean
This body of water isn't always mentioned directly in the poem, but it's definitely ever-present. The ocean is huge, deeply powerful, magical and a little scary. It swallowed the ship and it surrou...
The Wreck
The wreck is the title image of this poem, and carries a lot of weight here. It refers to an actual object, a sunken ship that the driver is trying to reach. But it also seems to point us toward ot...
The Mermaid/Merman
This image initiates the speaker's final transformation. At first, the speaker is a human diver, but then she becomes a strange aquatic creature. A made up creature too, the sort of thing you might...
Compass, Log
These items are ruined parts of the ship. They were once useful, but they have been destroyed by the disaster. Unlike the rest of the ruined cargo, these would have been essential instruments for n...