In Billy Collins’s “On Turning Ten”(1995) Collins states that as we get older reality settles in and nothing is simple. Collins is not fond of growing up; all five stanzas of the poem reiterates his negative feeling toward aging. Collins indicates how as he grows older life it is not as nice as he believed it to be. The more he dawns on his past the more heavy hearted he becomes. In the first stanza, Collins mentions how he feels sick when even thinking about turning ten. He compares aging to some of the worst physical illnesses happening to a person mentally. Collins says it is worse than measles, mumps, and chickenpox of the soul. This clearly show the reader his negative feelings toward aging in the poem immediately. The second stanza starts
with Collins stating how he believes other people have forgotten about how wonderful it was to be young. The stanza comprises of Collins reminiscing about earlier ages. He can remember how he could become invisible at four, become a soldier at seven, become a prince when he was nine. The third stanza brings the reader back to Collins’ negative feelings toward aging. As opposed to his earlier ages, Collins now just watches the day go by and all of the old items he once enjoyed go to waste. In the fourth and fifth stanzas, Collins states how reality is starting to settle in. His imaginary friends no longer exist, nor does his optimism. He is no longer as strong as he believed, invisible like before, or invincible. Collins states that now he falls and bleeds like everyone else.
Many modern poets, including Billy Collins write in free verse. Richard Howard was quoted singing Collins’s praises about his verse. Howard said, “He has a remarkably American voice…that one recognizes immediately as being of the moment and yet has real validity besides, reaching very far into what verse can do”(“Billy Collins”). His poems often “reject any regular meter or rhyme, though it still incorporates rhythmical and sound effects that help convey a poem’s meaning” (Prinsky). Because the poem flows quickly, it is very easy to understand and interpret. If it were written with a certain rhyme scheme, the ideas that Collins portrayed would sound choppy and hard to infer. All of the points proved before work together to shape the overall meaning of the work. The author wrote this poem not only to provide readers with a relatable experience presented in an unorthodox way, but he also wrote it to show that even though one part of life is in the past, revisiting moments can bring happiness and be very beneficial. Towards the end of the poem when speaking about the present and how students still stop by to visit him and “turn in late papers”, he says that they”....[ask] a question about Yeats or double spacing” (Line 34). This line stands out because it shows that no matter the time frame, revisiting the past can help and not always harm. This meaning can relate to many things,
With the use of irony and a free rhyme scheme, Collins’ poem vocalizes his opinion on how lying to children about significant facts can only serve to make them ignorant. The way he communicates this to us is by ironically emphasizing events by understating them. He shows how important an event is by mocking the teacher’s portrayal of the event. One example of how he does this is how the teacher tells his students that the ice age was just the “chilly age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters.”(3-4). Collins does this several times with other important events in history, such as the Spanish Inquisition, where “[It] was nothing more than an outbreak of questions.”(7-8). The teacher’s interpretation of events, when compared to the actual events themselves creates a sense of unease, as the lies stray far away from what actually happened, and brings up the question of whether or not these lies should be told. Collins uses events that involve death and destruction to accentuate how big the contrast between the teacher’s explanation and reality is. After the class ends, the children leave the classroom to “torment the weak and the smart” (15-16), while the teacher is oblivious to it all. Note that Collins puts “and the smart” (16) on a separate line from “torment the weak” (15). The children in the class aren’t smart because they did not learn about the true events in history. This distinction emphasized the ignorance of the children. This contrasts with Wilbur’s poem, as the lie told there served to soothe a child’s fear, rather than breed ignorance. The rhyme scheme is different as well. Collins’ free rhyme scheme is used to create a sense of unease, whereas Wilbur’s rhyme scheme creates a child-like feeling to his poem. Unlike the parents in “A Barred Owl”, the teacher is portrayed as an ignorant man, unaware of what happens around
When our lives begin, we are innocent and life is beautiful, but as we grow older and time slowly and quickly passes we discover that not everything about life is quite so pleasing. Along with the joys and happiness we experience there is also pain, sadness and loneliness. Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" both tell us about older men who are experiencing these dreadful emotions.
Williams, R. H., & Wirths, C. G. (1965). Lives through the years: Styles of life and successful aging.
The Trouble with Poetry mainly focuses on time, whether it's actual time like; day and night or describing the atmosphere that is in his surroundings. Collins begins his poem with "walked along a beach.. cold Florida sand.." and ends with "poet of San Francisco.. treacherous halls of high school.." Possibly describing a time he has lived. His tone rotates throughout the poem expressing the pros and cons about poetry itself. He expresses sorrow in lines 1-24 wanting poetry to stop spreading almost like an act of selfishness, but his emotions shift in lines 25-47 to a positive tone referring to poetry being something he can escape to.
become older, and how they look back at their youth. Without similes like this, the
ThThe notion of getting older, one day has too frightened me. I wonder what could I have done in the past to change the future. I reminisce of all the things I have done with the people that I love. But, at the end the day, I look forward to getting older. I look forward to the memories that I will make, which one day will be stories told between two friends or family members about their crazy grandmother Gabriella. E.B. White 's essay represents the fears that adults, but mostly parents, face when seeing children grow up and experience life the same way they once did. These nostalgic moments turn to fear of losing their youth. I believe that White 's essay is a manifestation of a mid-life crisis that fails to show what life has to offer after
trauma can have on someone, even in adulthood. The speaker of the poem invokes sadness and
Morrie remembered the days when he was a teacher and having his students come in and out complaining how miserable and how hard their lives are and some even thinking about doing suicide and also when people are young they’re not wise and they really don’t know what's happening around them in their lives and it just miserable so Morrie likes aging actually Morrie embraces aging. ¨If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.¨(Albom #118-119). Everything has a positive and a negative and I don’t mind aging but at the same time don’t want to get older I want to be a kid again and not have to worry about trying to get into college, or to get a job and what I’m going to do as a living in the future and other things that make life just a bit harder like this dumb essay but thinking about being younger and happy when everything was a lot much simpler and easier doesn’t help but I need to think about the positive and also stay positive and just embrace aging like Morrie because who knows thing might turn out better than expected. Everything has a positive and a negative and I don’t mind aging but at the same time don’t want to get older I want to be a kid again and not have to worry about trying to get into college, or to get a job and what I’m going to do as a living in the future and other things that make
... ‘You’re not even old enough to know how hard life gets,’ he tells her. ‘Obviously, doctor,’ she says, ‘you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.’ No, but his profession and every adult life is to some degree a search for the happiness she does not even know she has.” (Ebert).
The article I chose for this assignment included two passages from the book, The Gift of Years, by Joan D. Chittister (1936). Chittister wrote this book when she was 81 years old and it is a particularly poignant read because the book provides a realistic and an optimistic view about how we grow old.
Many of life’s experience colour the way we look at ourselves and society in which we live. The novel Montana 1948 by Larry Watson is indeed all about the tragic event of David Hayden’s twelfth summer, which irrevocably changed him. These events help us understand the idea of coming of age and how childhood experiences change us and affect how we define ourselves as adults.
As mentioned, the parents’ pains, negative emotions and hatred are presented in the first part. Even from the first few lines from the poem: “Ulcerated tooth keeps me...
One of our greatest fears is the fear of death. Immortality is something any of us would take in a heartbeat, so we do not have to face death. But this is something that we cannot run away from. Mortality is an unpleasant thought that sits in the back of our minds form our day to day lives. Yet, this fear is something that is developed more over time as we grow older. Children believe that the world is such a wonderful place, they fell invincible. They also have wonderful creative skills and imaginations which is often revealed to us when they can play one game for hours at one time. Yet, as a child ages, this imagination and creativity can disappear. This is what William Wordsworth is terrified of. Wordsworth is an English poet as well as his colleague Samuel Taylor Coleridge published the first edition of Lyrical Ballads and it changed everything as mentioned Evelyn Toynton, “In early 1798, Coleridge and a little-known poet named William Wordsworth decided to publish a joint volume of their poems.” (Toynton, Evelyn). William expressed this fear of premature mortality of the imagination in each of his works, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, The Prelude, The World is Too Much with Us, and London, 1802.
... Therefore, instead of losing mental stability because of old memories, one should try to embrace sanity and perpetuate it in life. Moreover, the poem emulates society because people fantasize about looking a certain way and feeling a certain way; however, they are meddling with their natural beauty and sometimes end up looking worse than before. For instance, old men and women inject their faces to resemble those in their youth, but they worsen their mental and physical state by executing such actions. To conclude, one should embrace her appearance because aging is inevitable.