1a. What do the two girls discover in a line of poetry? Who wrote the line?
2a. What does the speaker think most likely happened "more than a week / later"?
3a. Why does the speaker love these girls?
4a. Identify what you consider to be the theme of the poem.
5a. To what degree have the girls, whom the speaker has never met, affected her life?
1b. Does the speaker of this poem know the secret of life?
2b. Why is the speaker so sure that, a week later, the girls have forgotten the line?
3b. Why does the speaker love the fact that the girls have forgotten the line? What does the speaker's loving this fact reveal about her?
4b. Why doesn't the speaker think the girls are fickle to abandon the line of poetry in her poem?
5b. What secrets of life have you discovered? How did they become evident to you?
Speaker. In your opinion, is the speaker the poet or a voice assumed by Levertov? What can be inferred about the speaker?
Free Verse. Review the cluster chart you made in Literary Tools. How many sentences make up the poem? Which sentence do you think reveals the poem's theme? Consider the breaks between stanza 8 and 9. What two points are emphasized by breaking the sentence in this particular place?
1. Write a paragraph explaining what the speaker knows for sure and what she surmises about the girls.
2. Imagine that you are the speaker. Write a journal entry explaining why you were moved when you heard two girls found the secret of life in one of your poems.
3. Imagine that you are one of the girls who read the speaker's poem. Write a letter to the poet explaining what the poem you read means to you.
Comparing Adjectives and Adverbs. Read the Language Arts Survey 3.47, "Recognizing Other Problems with Modifiers." Then use that information to rewrite the following sentences correctly.
1. What could be more nicer than learning two girls liked your poem?
2. Of all her readers, the girls are the more reassuring because they found the secret of life in the speaker's poem.
3. The hopefullest thing about the girls is that they will keep looking for the secret of life in other places.
4. The speaker is the less angry of all poets because it doesn't bother her that the girls forgot the line a week later.
5. The speaker skillfulliest puts deep meaning in her poem without being aware of it.
