New Test for Narcissism
Susan McLean

You want to know if someone’s narcissistic?

Just ask. The narcissistic feel no shame

for what they are. I know it sounds simplistic.

You needn’t ask them devious, sophistic

questions that dissemble your true aim.

One query yields as valid a statistic.

Just ask. They won’t act shocked or go ballistic

or feel that it’s a trait they must disclaim.

They don’t see self-regard as egotistic

or culpable. It’s merely realistic.

If you had their aplomb, you’d feel the same—

so don’t be delicate and euphemistic.

Has anyone, however altruistic

and self-effacing, garnered lasting fame

without the slightest tinge of the hubristic?

Even in artwork at its most artistic,

the artist’s always peering from the frame.

You want to know if someone’s narcissistic?

Just ask. It’s simple, yes, but not simplistic.

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Susan’s notes: “This poem got its start when my sister Sandy told me that a psychologist had discovered that a single question had proven to be just as accurate as an extensive questionnaire at detecting whether the respondent was narcissistic. I thought that it was both funny and apt that you could reliably discover whether someone was a narcissist just by asking, ‘Are you narcissistic?’ But it also made me think about the pros and cons of narcissism and about its connection to creativity. My poem is a variation on a villanelle. It has the same rhyme scheme as a standard villanelle, but with fewer repeated lines, so it uses a wider range of rhyme words. The poem first appeared in American Arts Quarterly.”

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Susan McLean is a retired English professor from Southwest Minnesota State University. She has published two poetry collections, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Latin poems by Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her third poetry book, Daylight Losing Time, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press.

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New Test for Narcissism Susan McLean

New Test for Narcissism
Susan McLean