Week 3: Red Shift By Ted Berrigan

(Before you start reading; i had problems with my computer during week 3 and was unable to respond to our last week of poetry; this is me making up that assignment)

In class we have been doing allot of discussion about the particular choices of writers which is a topic that i find, very very interesting. My favorite poem; Red Shift by Ted Berrigan, tells a very interesting story through the fine particulars, this is it:




Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame
The air is biting, February, fierce arabesques
        on the way to tree in winter streetscape
I drink some American poison liquid air which bubbles
        and smoke to have character and to lean
In. The streets look for Allen, Frank, or me, Allen
        is a movie, Frank disappearing in the air, it's
Heavy with that lightness, heavy on me, I heave
        through it, them, as
The Calvados is being sipped on Long island now
        twenty years almost ago, and the man smoking
Is looking at the smilingly attentive woman, & telling.
Who would have thought that I'd be here, nothing
        wrapped up, nothing buried, everything
Love, children, hundreds of them, money, marriage-
        ethics, a politics of grace,
Up in the air, swirling, burning even or still, now
        more than ever before?
Not that practically a boy, serious in corduroy car coat
        eyes penetrating the winter twilight at 6th
& Bowery in 1961. Not that pretty girl, nineteen, who was
        going to have to go, careening into middle-age so,
To burn, & to burn more fiercely than even she could imagine
        so to go. Not that painter who from very first meeting
I would never & never will leave alone until we both vanish
        into the thin air we signed up for & so demanded
To breathe & who will never leave me, not for sex, nor politics
        nor even for stupid permanent estrangement which is
Only our human lot & means nothing. No, not him.
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, & I will never go away, & you will never escape from me
        who am always & only a ghost, despite this frame, Spirit
Who lives only to nag.
I'm only pronouns, & I am all of them, & I didn't ask for this
        You did
I came into your life to change it & it did so & now nothing
        will ever change
That, and that's that.
Alone & crowded, unhappy fate, nevertheless
        I slip softly into the air
The world's furious song flows through my costume.

(here is a link to the page from where i copied and pasted the poem; http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/berrigan/redshift.html)

I have spent allot of time analyzing this poem and at first glance when reading this poem it appear too disjointed to form any coherent thought. But then when you begin to examine the particulars of Ted Berrigans style you begin to realize that this poem tells the story of someone who is born, ages, then dies. Particulars that clue the reader in to this idea are the early lines; but mostly the first. the first line says "Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame" the numbers refer to the speakers time of birth and the rest holds the idea that at that moment he has the ability to become anything he wants. unfortunately this can not last. 

another line i find interesting is "The Calvados is being sipped on Long island now/ twenty years almost ago," - this line shows the transition from childhood to adulthood, both in the idea that he has moved on from drinking  "some American poison liquid air" to expensive brandy; as well as saying that twenty years has past. 

 Age creep upon the speaker harshly in the last few lines; when i think we can make the assumption that the character knows he is going to die he even seems to go through a midlife crisis - "I am 43. When will I die? I will never die, I will live". With this line we see that the last section of speech differs from the beginning in the way that it become more frenzied almost as if the character is struggling to live.  The second to last line "i slip softly into the air" almost evokes the very action of dying. 

 Ted Berrigan is also great at creating action through line breaks; one of my favorite lines that reinforces this idea are the lines that read " into the thin air we signed up for & so demanded/To breathe..." i feel like this break between demanded and to breath hovers on the air and reinforces the word "demanded". It gives the reader an even more personal idea of what the speaker has been through; the idea that life has not been easy for the speaker. 

I could talk about this poem for hours but here's my question; what particular do you first notice?