Warning is a poem written by Jenny Joseph in 1974.

Reading the title without reading the text, I expect the poem to be about something you have to pay attention and should be aware. The title alerts me about something I don’t say.

The composition doesn’t show a similar pattern. It is composed by four stanzas of different lengths: the first one covers the first eleven line, the second and the third stanzas cover four lines each, thus they are quatrains and the fourth stanza covers the last three lines, so it is a tercet. Since there isn’t a definite pattern, the reader wants to know why the poet did that.

The poem is about a woman who cannot wait to be old. She describes how she would like to live as an elderly pensioner. It also tells about the things she wants to wear and how she wants to behave in their old age.

There isn’t a regular rhyme scheme: the composition is written in free lines. The lack of rhyme scheme correlates with the lack of concern elderly people have about fitting into society. The use of free line allows the reader to understand the freedom that old people have: they do what they please, when they please. Moreover the good thing about old age is that nobody cares so much about what you look like or what you do.

There aren’t dialogues and the tone is ironical. The alliteration of letter “s” conveys the ides of thinking and dreaming.