[Ed Shacklee]

Made my morning. 'The Panhandler's Tale', a truly delightful poem by Maryann Corbett I came across at Kin Poetry Journal, here.

Ed

[Janice D. Soderling]

Knocked me off my feet!!

I wonder though

I too am something other than what I see....

Is that a typo, should it be "seem..." rather than "see..."?

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks, Ed, and yes, Janice, it should be "seem" (as in "I seem to be suffering a plague of editorial typos"). I'll try to dash off a note to Uche.

[John Riley]

Great poem, Maryann. The last stanza is especially good.

[Jean L. Kreiling]

Congratulations, Maryann, on a poem both erudite and down-to-earth, both well-staged and true.

Best,
Jean

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Excellent narrative, Maryann. As Salt says, it has a lyric intensity delivered with great clarity of scene-making.

Cally

[Charlotte Innes]

Fantastic, Maryann! Funny, sad, true, relevant--and so Homeric. I kept thinking of all those long twisty stories in The Odyssey as I read, the way Odysseus keeps on lying, and somehow gets everyone to believe him, and give him food and clothes and a good bath.

Really enjoyed this one!

Charlotte

[R. Nemo Hill]

Nice, Maryann, very nice.

Nemo

[David Rosenthal]

Nice piece, Maryann, congratulations.

David R.

[Maryann Corbett]

John, Jean, Charlotte, Cally, Nemo, David--thank you all.

This seems like a good time to mention that I got the idea for the poem from a comment of Sam Gwynn's, some time ago on Facebook, about the wildly involved tales panhandlers tell, which Bill Lantry replied to by recalling the legends in which beggars turn out to be gods in disguise.

Whether it's here or there, we're always feeding each other.