15. Quarantine IV - Red Shift
Four weeks into our collective Great Pause, the Bafflers examine \u201cRed Shift,\u201d Ted Berrigan\u2019s iconic New York School poem. This close reading \u2013 distinguished in part by our own Sparrow having been Berrigan\u2019s student - proceeds from the astrophysical definition of \u201credshift\u201d to speculations into what attributive meanings to which Berrigan might allude. This includes a broad look into the nature of time as surfaced in the poem and in part depth charged in Berrigan situating the poem \u201cat 8:08 p.m.\u201d (the Eight-Fold Path, I-Ching and Hubble\u2019s insights into an exploding universe). We touch on his forebearers \u2013 Allen Ginsberg, Frank O\u2019Hara and John Ashbery - as well as Berrigan\u2019s friends and allies, including Joe Brainard, Dick Gallup and Ron Padgett (including a nod to the latter\u2019s memoir TED). We look to his nineteenth-century antecedents in the Transcendentalists and Whitman as well as how Berrigan self-identified as a late Beatnik. We touch on the role the song \u201cCalifornia Dreaming\u201d plays in the work and Berrigan\u2019s working-class poetics, among other ruminative forays, including the Esopus River, the poets Jorie Graham, Bernadette Mayer, Lewis Warsh and Robinson Jeffers, as well as what existential insight might be disguised in a Harris Tweed jacket. SPECIAL FEATURE: We embed a recording of Berrigan reading the work at Naropa University, 1982, from EXACT CHANGE Yearbook 1995 no. 1 (Ed. Peter Gizzi).\n\nADDENDUM: \n\n1. The chronological early publishing history of THE SONNETS is correctly listed below: \nC Press \u2014 c1963. Mimeograph edition\nGrove Press \u2014 c1967\nUnited Artists \u2014 1982 (With seven additional sonnets not in original)\n\n2. This podcast includes speculation around Berrigan's financial straits and schemes as well as the circumstances around his death. We regret and ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies, and please listen with an open heart.