[Susan McLean]

I particularly admire poems that risk making the narrator look bad (if it is not immediately apparent that the narrator is a persona), in which the narrator is willing to address his or her own flaws. One of the greatest temptations for writers is to make one's own reflection look a little better than it is, a kind of preening for the camera. As Rhina points out, there is a lot of characterization in this poem from the vocabulary and telling details, but for me the emotional honesty is the poem's greatest asset.

Susan