On Turning Ten

Originally published in The Art of Drowning (1995), “On Turning Ten” was intended as a tongue-in-cheek satire of the depressing birthday poetry that has been so popular with poets throughout the ages, sometimes candidly known as “midlife crisis poems.” These poems usually involve a poet coming upon a milestone age—always somehow a surprise, no matter how well-prepared the poet might have thought themselves to be—and looking back with melancholy at their lost youth. Poems of this nature can also give stoic advice to others, most often someone younger who is having a birthday. An example of this self-reflective poetry on aging is 18th-century poet Alexander Pope’s “To Mrs. M. B. on Her Birthday.” Pope engages the tropes associated with midlife crisis poetry, such as mourning the past and witnessing death even in the birth of a new year:

With added years if Life bring nothing new,

But, like a Sieve, let ev’ry blessing thro’,

Some joy still lost, as each vain year runs o’er,

And all we gain, some sad Reflection more;

Is that a Birth-Day? ‘tis alas! too clear,

‘Tis but the funeral of the former year (Lines 5-10).

Pope’s mournful tone matches the end of Collins’s poem: