On Turning Ten

“On Turning Ten” is written in free verse, without any structured meter or rhyme scheme. It is comprised of five stanzas: seven lines, nine lines, seven lines, four lines, and five lines; the lines also vary in length. Rather than structuring the poem mathematically, Collins separates his stanza based on tone and theme. Each one represents a slightly different tone and level of maturity, from the childish drama of the opening stanza to the more introspective melancholy of the final stanza. The narrative arc of the five stanzas can be seen as a parallel to the arc of an entire lifespan.

The free verse form keeps the poem feeling conversational, mimicking the rhythm of speech between friends. This direct, intimate simplicity is a hallmark of Collins’s poetry—a comfortable sense of the “everyman” underlaid with a more complex poignancy.

Despite the poem’s lack of a formal rhyme scheme, it does engage in a sense of rhythm using repeated consonants and vowels. In the first stanza, the S sound is repeated first in “something, / something worse than any stomach ache” (Lines 2-3) and then again in “spirit,” “psyche,” and “soul” (Lines 5-7).