In "The Mystery," Glück spends the fourth and fifth stanzas describing her "dark" past and her sense that she was like a baby in a stroller being shoved from place to place. But then she abruptly claims, "And yet I saw amazing things." What "amazing things" do you think she saw and how could they offset the obvious misery she felt as well?

Most people's lives have been touched by divorce, either in their own family, or in one they are close to. Consider how your own life, or that of someone close to you, has been affected by the break-up of a marriage and write an essay on how the people involved survived it. You do not need to identify people specifically—only describe their methods of coping and how you may or may not have handled it differently...