The English Roses admonishing her older provocative self. Madonna's narration was described by Ginny Dougary as "bossy". She also found parallels with the singer's childhood in "The English Roses". "Slate"s Polly Shulman found the book to be "charmless, didactic" and egoistic since she felt it revolved around Madonna and her daughter. Shulman added that ""The English Roses" is a dull little thing, though not incompetent. Madonna does understand the basic structure of storytelling—perhaps too well", with multiple cliches present while making the titular characters "so passive that they might as well be good." David Kipen of the "San Francisco Chronicle" humorously said that
The Best American Poetry 2003 and Ted Kooser. The Best American Poetry 2003 The Best American Poetry 2003, a volume in "The Best American Poetry series", was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Yusef Komunyakaa. Ron Smith, reviewing the book in The Richmond Times-Dispatch, wrote that Galway Kinnell's "When the Towers Fell" is "often moving, even if it doesn't manage the fusion of Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot it aims for." Another poem in the volume focusing on the effects of terrorism is Susan Dickman's "Skin". Smith thought the better poems in this edition were by Marilyn Nelson, Rodney Jones, Brigit Pegeen