Books like Diving Into the Wreck

With language as clinically apocalyptic and claustrophobically dystopic as anything to be found in the postmodern nightmares of Ballard and DeLillo, Diving Into the Wreck rages against the heteronormative status quo as Rich points her poetic finger at men and women, both of whom bear the burden of guilt. These poems range across shifting tropes such as ecological destruction, commodification, Vietnam, dreams and violence to showcase Rich's belief that the domestic scene is as much a prison as the Hanoi Hotel, except the torture here is being administered specifically on the psyches of women by all the socially acclimated cyborgs, with their gender roles callously installed at an early age and their mass-produced parts clicking and whirling, every one of them leading lives as sinister as a hive mind horde and as banal as a commercial seen for the thousandth time. The titular poem is Rich at her best, weaving an astounding metaphor for the mystery of meaning and identity that rises above simply condemning either gender. Meant to make men squirm and women take a long sober and look at themselves, the short-fused poems found in this collection are an angry swarm of bees written by a very angry poet. A much needed kick to the teeth for every reader.