Friday, January 30, 2009
Artist Post
Im picking max ernst for my artist because i find his work interesting anmd i think ill enjoy wokring with it
Monday, September 15, 2008
Red Shift Essay
“Red Shift”
In the poem “Red Shift” the poet Ted Berrigan suggests many things at once; he suggests that time in and of itself can effectively change people not only physically, ageing them, but also their nature. He suggests that change is not always positive. Finally, the most important point he emphasizes is how powerful both love and patterns are. All of his points are defined within the misery and seeming hopelessness of his present situation.
The first point is perhaps the most tentative of them all. Since we are deriving the entirety of our introspective from the narrow confines of the poem, we are allowed liberty to make certain assumptions. Given the fact that the author is reflecting back on his life as it was twenty years ago, this immediately creates juxtaposition between that flash frame of his life back then and his current predicament. Taking into account that he describes himself as fat and is walking alone at 8.08pm on a February night while revisiting his life many years ago with obvious relish he is clearly unhappy now. What we know about the narrator is very limited. However we do know that he is overweight, meandering on a cold winter night, and reminiscing about his life twenty years back. These are not the charectistics of a person who is content with their life.
He has illustrated the superficial part of the change with the obesity and the car crash that his wife became. The non-physical and ultimately more important part of the change is the estrangement. If not for the estrangement, there would not be a poem. Change is often used throughout literature to signify progress, which is nearly always thought to be positive. This is not the case here. The change in this situation was for the worse, at least from the narrator’s point of view. We do not get a glimpse into the mind of the estranged wife, who may well have found the change to be entirely beneficial. This brings to light the as yet unmentioned point that not all that is beneficial is necessarily beneficial to all parties involved, or to all parties equally. Back to the point, this change has plunged our speaker into depression. The first two of the initial three points could for all intents and purposes be combined to one two part point, as both are directly related.
The most crucial point of the poem is how important love and patterns can be. As we our given a basic understanding of the narrators situation, we are not sure which of these he misses more. We aren’t so naïve in audience as to not know that many times many people mistake the one for the other. People see patterns in their life which they may mistake for love because it feels like stability, but really it is because they are creatures of habbit, in their life with one particular person has become a pattern. It is the change which drove the speaker to depression, but it is the loss of the love of the patterns which make the change so significant.
In conclusion, “Red Shift” by Ted Berrigan catalogues a mid life crisis, during which the speaker, upon finding himself overweight, aged, and alone on a cold winter night happens on the realization that life was better twenty years ago. The points it makes are far more eloquent than the actuality of the circumstances. Never the less, the poem provides an almost grim parable of growing older and perhaps growing apart.
In the poem “Red Shift” the poet Ted Berrigan suggests many things at once; he suggests that time in and of itself can effectively change people not only physically, ageing them, but also their nature. He suggests that change is not always positive. Finally, the most important point he emphasizes is how powerful both love and patterns are. All of his points are defined within the misery and seeming hopelessness of his present situation.
The first point is perhaps the most tentative of them all. Since we are deriving the entirety of our introspective from the narrow confines of the poem, we are allowed liberty to make certain assumptions. Given the fact that the author is reflecting back on his life as it was twenty years ago, this immediately creates juxtaposition between that flash frame of his life back then and his current predicament. Taking into account that he describes himself as fat and is walking alone at 8.08pm on a February night while revisiting his life many years ago with obvious relish he is clearly unhappy now. What we know about the narrator is very limited. However we do know that he is overweight, meandering on a cold winter night, and reminiscing about his life twenty years back. These are not the charectistics of a person who is content with their life.
He has illustrated the superficial part of the change with the obesity and the car crash that his wife became. The non-physical and ultimately more important part of the change is the estrangement. If not for the estrangement, there would not be a poem. Change is often used throughout literature to signify progress, which is nearly always thought to be positive. This is not the case here. The change in this situation was for the worse, at least from the narrator’s point of view. We do not get a glimpse into the mind of the estranged wife, who may well have found the change to be entirely beneficial. This brings to light the as yet unmentioned point that not all that is beneficial is necessarily beneficial to all parties involved, or to all parties equally. Back to the point, this change has plunged our speaker into depression. The first two of the initial three points could for all intents and purposes be combined to one two part point, as both are directly related.
The most crucial point of the poem is how important love and patterns can be. As we our given a basic understanding of the narrators situation, we are not sure which of these he misses more. We aren’t so naïve in audience as to not know that many times many people mistake the one for the other. People see patterns in their life which they may mistake for love because it feels like stability, but really it is because they are creatures of habbit, in their life with one particular person has become a pattern. It is the change which drove the speaker to depression, but it is the loss of the love of the patterns which make the change so significant.
In conclusion, “Red Shift” by Ted Berrigan catalogues a mid life crisis, during which the speaker, upon finding himself overweight, aged, and alone on a cold winter night happens on the realization that life was better twenty years ago. The points it makes are far more eloquent than the actuality of the circumstances. Never the less, the poem provides an almost grim parable of growing older and perhaps growing apart.
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