Summary Of On Turning Ten By Billy Collins

In this poetic analysis, we are attempting to interpret the age of the speaker in the poem “On Turning Ten”, which is Billy Collins himself. The poem itself is surprisingly dark, yet very relatable in an unusual way, because you couldn’t see the world the way the poet did when he was younger, but you could somehow connect to the speaker if he told his story while looking back at his past. That is why the age that the poem gives off is somewhere in his mid 20s or in his 30s.

It is possible that this poem is written in this age because of some specific imagery, the shifting of tones, the mood, the subject itself and finally the specific use of diction. Let’s start by investigating the tone of the speaker in the poem. The tone in the poem at