Red Shift

In the poem “Red Shift” Ted Berrigan suggests that the events in the speaker’s life, both past and present directly relate to the speaker’s current attitude resulting in the poem’s tone.

The speaker describes the scene as an “indefinable ample rhythmic frame” expressing his monotonous and banal feelings at the time. He feels as though his life is very repetitive and finds happiness in his thoughts about his once charmed past. “The streets look for Allen, Frank, or me, Allen is a movie, Frank disappearing in the air”, the description are people of the speaker’s past that he can no longer look to for support. His friends and family are what gave him the drive to achieve his goals and now he has neither of the two. “Heavy with that lightness, heavy on me, I heave through it, them” may describe both his physical and mental state. He is weighted down by the thought of his past loved ones, heaving from a physical standpoint due to the fact that he may have a heavyset structure.

“The Calvados is being sipped on Long island now twenty years almost ago” The speaker is having a flash back that stretches nearly twenty years into his past. Not only does he describe the material goods he once possessed such as the ability to drink calvados, but “a smilingly attentive women” who supports all that he has to say and what he wants to become in life. His life is full of “love, children, hundreds of them, money, marriage ethics, a politics of grace” and more importantly he holds a clear mind and no feelings of insignificance. This feeling of happiness does not last and the speaker immediately changes from an optimistic tone back to reality. His emotions at this time are running wild, he cannot make up his mind whether he wants to describe reality or reminisce about what he used to have.

“I would never and never will leave alone until we both vanish into thin air we signed up for and so demanded” are the words the speaker uses when he is emoting anger. He at first seemed indifferent about life but deep down he is angered. He was at one time on top of the world and has now been knocked down to the point insanity. “There’s a song “California Dreaming”, but no, I won’t do that I am 43. When will I die? I Will never die I will live to be 110” he is already shooting down his own dreams before the possibility of believing them himself. He obviously suffering from depression due to the turn for the worse his life has taken.

Ted Berrigan creates a theme of what life is truly about. Life changes there is no doubt about that but the key is not letting life get the best of you, in reality it is about playing the hand you are dealt and making the best of it. He does it through a man with wild emotions who constantly changes how he feels about life. The poem has varying tones throughout its body but overall the tone is the detachment as person has when they no longer have who and what they need to make it through life with sanity.

"The Accident"

Alex T 7 said...
I believe that the poem is describing a close call on behalf of the secret affair between a man and his neighbor. The man seems to be very uncomfortable in his dealings with his wife not acting as his normal “show off” self. The neighbor is described as “still-flushed” apparently out of guilt or the fact that the man was acting in a peculiar unrest manner. The speaker makes note of the awkward situation allowing the reader to believe that the man’s wife knows that something is out of line.

Alex T 7 said...
Dear Molly B 7 I agree with your statement about the husband attempting to make things better. He has obviously done something wrong and wants to make things right when everything is visibly distorted.