Red shift explication

Daniel Truong


In the poem “Red Shift” by Ted Berrigan the poet suggests many ideas about change and how it can be very negative throughout one’s life. The poet also suggests that speaker failed in trying to obtain his dream and regrets things that he has done in his lifetime.
The poem begins on a cold winter night where a man is walking through the streets on a winter night remembering about things he once had. He describes his two children, Frank and Allen and describes a scene where he is at long island talking to women than he describes it all being thrown up into the air just like he lost everything. The speaker’s life changed from being a successful man who lived in long island to being an elderly alcoholic who is reminiscing about his lifetime.
The speaker describes a boy and a pretty girl who is 19 which would later be his girlfriend. The girlfriend becomes a nagging woman whom he eventually leaves and leaves the currently old man, depressed and wondering the streets drunk and not sure about who he is. The speaker describes himself as a ghost with a body who lives only to nag. That he wonders around the streets and just nags at people.
The speaker describes himself as pronouns meaning that he has no identity. The poet is trying to describe humans or more Americans that try to achieve the American dream because it’s what you’re supposed to do in America and people lose everything because they conform with the rest of America and how people end up unhappy because they decided to follow the path that the rest of Americans tried to do. The last line of the poem “The world’s furious song flows through my costume” adds conformation to my idea. Costumes represent the pronouns that people become and the furious song is the regret that people have trying to conform with other people’s ideas and the world is simply the people who failed trying to conform to other people’s ideas and ideals.
The poet suggests in his poem that people try to conform to each other ideas instead of trying to come up with their own. He does this by describing the successes and failures of people who have failed and succeeded in trying to achieve the American dream. The poet also describes the speaker as pronouns and never introduces him he does this to show that the speaker is many people all conforming and not having their own ideas and identities.