Nearing Forty
Nearing Forty“Nearing Forty”, by Derek Walcott, is in my opinion, a poem inspired by a sleepless night of worrying and fear. A fear facilitated by a mid-life crisis that causes the narrator to start thinking about how much time he has left and how mediocre life has been. Wolcott uses a lot of metaphors and symbolism to express his point of view. The technical aspects of the poem also seem to be used in an ingenious way.
The metre and form of the poem is written in a free verse that is influenced by iambic pentameter. You can notice the influence by the way 18 out of 32 lines have ten beats.
Because it is not in stanzas, the first thing you notice is the rhyme scheme of “Nearing Forty”. Using this rhyme scheme, you can tell which lines belong together and where thoughts and ideas change. The rhyme scheme is: abacbcddeeffgghhiijjkbklcmjmcbcj
Line 24, the l, line is the only one that doesn’t rhyme with another line.
As for the form and punctuation of “Nearing Forty”,...
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