Red Shift

In the poem "Red Shift", Ted Berrigan the author, suggests that life is miserable and our past sometimes comes around with a sour taste.

His state of mind is reflected by the world that he describes in the poem. He uses comparisons, metaphores and some sad words and expressions to translate his loneliness and specially his feelings about life.

He painted a night, a winter night, without sun, but "indefinable ample" he said about the frame. "I drink some American poison liquid air which bubbles and smoke to have character and to lean in"; that is a sad person who's searching comfort or power to resist into futile objects. From this we can see that his alone and he's searching for comfort or someone to talk to. The sentence: " the streets look for Allen, Frank, or me, Allen is a movie, Frank disappearing in the air..." He's so desperate that he's even imagine people in the streets with him. When he says: "...twenty years almost ago, and time was for him. this was about how he felt,, about where his mind was settled.

Thinking of his past, he couldn't believe to see himself the way he is now. After all he did: "love, children, hundreds of them, money, marriage-ethics,  a politics of grace." this is somehow unbelievable to him. Ted Barrigan, in all of his comparisons was pessimist, and his pessimism suggest that he's suffering.

But his pessimism is due to some expereince in the past. By the sentence: "not that pretty girl, nineteen, who was going to have to go, careening into middle-age so..." This accentuation on the verb go makes us feel that he has in the past suffered about people leaving him. And this, surely had hurt him, because he's talking about: "when will I die? I will never ie, I will live to be 110, and I will never go away..." And now, his encouraging himself with the words "i will never die, i will live to be 110."

Ted Berrigan has a broken heart, he's comparing himself to the worst things: " who am always and only a ghost, despite this frame, spirit who lives only to nag." The last lines of the poem confress that he was hurt by somebody or something in the past that wanted him at first but now changed his or her mind.
Ted Berrigan's poem is a unique poem the way he presents life th way he illustrates the bad moments by comparisons the idea in his poem is that the past may come to haunt u but let don't let it win, you should fight back and win.