On Turning Ten By Billy Collins

Memories are like your friends; they come and they go. Like the important people in our lives, we must live in the present and cherish our memories. They’re the things that keep us going, help us learn, and retain our best and worst experiences; or, they can be essentially useless. In “On Turning Ten”, by Billy Collins, the readers can learn and be reminded of the plethora of emotions and painful truths they experienced themselves when entering the double digits. By writing from a child’s perspective, Billy Collins is effectively able to disclose and describe the complexities a child goes through when turning ten. The overall tone of this poem has been consistently solemn and nostalgic. The opening of the first stanza, “the whole idea of

However, the amount of metaphors and imagery he incorporates into this piece is the most effective; for example, describing the feeling of turning ten is like “a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul”. It is simple, yet it hides a crucial and deeper meaning. The measles, mumps and chickenpox are all highly contagious diseases. This is significant because Collins is referencing that since they are contagious, almost all children will feel like they are having “a kind of measles...of the soul” when they realize that they have to grow up. It is more important to realize the use of the word “disfiguring”. According to Merriam-Webster, it means to “to spoil or damage the appearance of something or someone”. Another key point is that when recovering from chickenpox, it is common to have blisters and scars left over. Thus, Billy Collins is pointing out that becoming ten defaces and scars a child’s soul and, the damage could be permanent. The most significant metaphor is the final stanza of “On Turning Ten”. In addition to metaphor, this stanza also is a juxtaposition and epiphany. At first, the time of place was in the past and the speaker believed “there was nothing under [their] skin but light”, until he now flashes to the present and realizes that he bleeds when he falls down. This whole stanza is a metaphor and it ties