Clio Educates the Masses, poem by Joan Colby (Mythic Poetry Series)

CLIO EDUCATES THE MASSES
by Joan Colby

This is the university where she presides.
Be seated, she commands. All you have learned
Thus far is wrong. The chalkboard, whiteboard,
Power points compel attention. Those who text
Love messages will discover how lack
Of industry impels the heart to fraudulent
Conjectures.

Her lesson plan is written in the blood
Of martyrs, revolutionaries, priests and bandits.
This is the alchemy, how the ore of intellect
Transforms her testimony. Earth sciences,
The tongues of literature, what are these to her
Provocations: that everything is lost in
Translation, the dictates of rewrite, redaction, erasure.

Here is your homework, the final obligation
Of trust: voluntary, open to fraud. Those who fail
The examination are doomed to retake it.
Over and over. Doomed as the class
Before you and the one after regardless
Of sheepskin or vesture, the volley of letters
Applauding your signature.

How she laughs drawing a zero in the air.
Posterity: a joke. She stomps on fame
With her spike heels. You have wasted your
Tuition and time. She marks your paper
With an emblem you can’t
Decipher or resist.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I began writing Clio poems about 30 years ago, starting with one titled “Ah Clio–Muse of History.” A number of the early Clio poems appeared in my first book Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve from Alembic Press. Over time, I added more Clio’s as they came to me, and recently I’ve written quite a number, of which “Clio Educates the Masses” is one. Kattywompus Press will bring out a chapbook of the Clio poems next year. The notion of Clio as the Muse of History appealed to me as we are all “victims” of history, one could say. In “Clio Educates the Masses,” we are reminded that those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.

IMAGE: “The Art of Painting,” detail depicting Clio, by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1665).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010).One of her poems is a winner of the 2014 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News,and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 14 books, including Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), which received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize,  Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press, Kelsay Books), Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press), and The Wingback Chair (FutureCycle Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. Visit her at joancolby.com.