<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538790" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Mingus At The Showplace</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen<br>and so I swung into action and wrote a poem</div><div style="margin:10px 0">and it was miserable, for that was how I thought<br>poetry worked: you digested experience shat</div><div style="margin:10px 0">literature. It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since<br>defunct, on West 4th st., and I sat at the bar,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">casting beer money from a reel of ones,<br>the kid in the city, big ears like a puppy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I knew Mingus was a genius. I knew two<br>other things, but as it happens they were wrong.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So I made him look at this poem.<br>&quot;There's a lot of that going around,&quot; he said,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right. He glowered<br>at me but didn't look as if he thought</div><div style="margin:10px 0">bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.<br>If they were baseball executives they'd plot</div><div style="margin:10px 0">to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game<br>could be saved from children. Of course later</div><div style="margin:10px 0">that night he fired his pianist in mid-number<br>and flurried him from the stand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;We've suffered a diminuendo in personnel,&quot;<br>he explained, and the band played on.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Anonymous submission.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Matthews">William Matthews</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538790" data-title="Mingus At The Showplace de William Matthews" data-description="I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen and so I swung into action and wrote a poem and it was miserable, for that was how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience shat literature. It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since defunct..."></div> </div> </div>

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