Red Shift Essay

In the poem “Red Shift”, The poet Ted Berrigan suggest that growing old is difficult B/c it leaves one alone, bitter and regretful. The author has the speaker shift his tone throughout the poem.

Towards the end of the poem the speaker seems to become angry when he starts off saying “there’s a song California dreaming, but no, I won’t do that I’m 43. When will I die? I will never die, I will live to be 110, and I will never go away, and you will never escape from me who am always and only a ghost, despite this frame, spirit who lives to nag. I’m only pronouns, and I am all of them, and I didn’t ask for this you did”. I believe the speaker is trying to say that he probably felt like he did so much for his country that he doesn’t want to go away when he say “I will never die, I will never go away.

In the poem the author has the speaker speak in different tone throughout the poem in the middle of the poem the speakers tone is in more of a bitter/ loneliness tone for example when he say “ not that pretty girl, nineteen, who was going to have to go, careening into middle age so, to burn, and to burn more fiercely than even she could imagine so to go. Not that painter who from very first meeting
I would never and never will leave alone until we both vanish into the thin air we signed up for and so demanded to breathe and who will never leave me, not for sex, nor politics estrangement which is only our human lot and means nothing no, not him.

At the end of the poem the speakers tone becomes more regretful the last six lines of the poem he says “I came into your life to change it and it did so and how nothing will ever change that, and that’s that. Alone and crowded, unhappy fate, nevertheless I slip softly into the air the worlds furious song flows through my costume.

Due to the following quotes Berrigan shows in his poem that the speaker might be a bitter, lonely, and regretful man that’s going through life in a difficult way. I say this because he kind of rambles on about no one leaving him for anything, and dying, he doesn’t want to leave the earth, and for that I believe he doesn’t want to grow old and face life with all of it’s trouble in it.