Our Local Business

[abu nuwas]

I'm gonna put it in my signature: 'I suck at poetry. Forgive me for my ignorance.' So I don't have to keep typing it :p Anyway, I don't get what you are doing here and I'd like to ask questions, but I'm not even sure what to ask.

Why repeat so many words? It makes my head hurt a little when I look at it- not to mention that the whole poem is like ten words long if you take out the repetition. I saw that you used a consistent meter broken at the fifth foot . . .

As to the theme . . .

a good person (aspirator and an inspiration)
got around (or was known around)
near the water with cliffs above
she dreams of clouds and sky

Our Local Business . . .

Mark,

First thank you for looking let alone commenting. As to the title, it made sense once, but only to me, and when I posted this in Another Place, a gang of people thought I was describing a prostitute, because of the title---instead of the rather touching affair, with a woman, who lives in a pretty little sea-side town, with teenage children, who, naturally, would always come first. So you got it.

More tricky is to explain all the repetition. To me, it sounded fresh, and would have been worth it regardless of any content. But I can easily see that to other ears, it may simply jar. In a way, it is a pity that you found it tiresome, not for the sake of my vanity, but because it illustrates a couple of things. One, the rhyming business, and two, the discussion about poems needing more than one layer. There is only one layer; but the language chosen gives it a certain coloring or flavour in any event. But there we are. I must try to dream up some useful title.