Shady Dealings

The Joys of Self Stimulation

by D. Garcia Wahl

According to health professionals, the benefits of masturbation include:

• improvement of the immune system’s functioning
• potential lowering of a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer
• relief of chronic back pain
• stress relief
• mood enhancement by releasing endorphins
• better sleep
• a mechanism for building stronger pelvic floor muscles
• enhances self esteem
• muscle relaxation

It’s been over a year now since Governor Pawlenty signed his name on the dotted line, making Mr. Bly the first official poet laureate of Minnesota. It’s been over a year now since Minnesota poet laureate Robert Bly has failed to do a damn thing with his illustrious title. Plain and simple, it’s an embarrassment; an embarrassment to Minnesota, Minnesota poetry, the Humanities Center, Gov. Pawlenty, and Bly himself. But he did live up to his promise. Robert Bly agreed to take the position as long as it “doesn’t involve any work”. He even wrote it on his application. He made one campaign promise and he actually kept it. How very noble, Mr. Bly.

Even looking at his website, there is barely a mention of his title and nothing that would indicate he’s done anything but promote Robert Bly. This is what he did without the title of poet laureate. The tradition has continued. He could have been promoting Minnesota poetry but, by his very words, had no intention of doing so. Minnesota poetry deserves so much more than this. The rot at the bottom of all this is that the position of Minnesota poet laureate has no term limit. Robert Bly could be poet laureate for the next thirty years. It could be the endless parade of nothing happening. He could turn all this around if he truly wanted to. It’s not as if it would take a lot of time away from his self promotion; in fact, his self would be more promoted if he actually did the job.

Let’s look at a time frame here. I spent one week just to see how much could be done in less than 10 hours. No more than 10 hours (1/4 of the average person’s work week). This is what I did over the span of 7 days:

• worked on editing manuscripts of local poets (2 hours)
• assembled a poetry reading in the northern suburbs (20 minutes)
• created a poetry talk show that promotes local poets (1 ½ hours)
• taught poetry to fourth graders in the St. Paul school district (1 hour)
• read poetry submissions as poetry editor for Whistling Shade (1/2 hour)
• attended a poetry reading (1/2 hour)
• attended a literary salon (1 ½ hours)
• was interviewed by a journal in England on the topic of Minnesota poetry (20 minutes)

The time to get a new poet laureate is now. It is a shame we could not have held the revolt during the poetry month of April. We will chalk the first mistake up to the need for celebrity in the position in order to garner proper headlines in the media. That has been done and I have yet to talk to one person who believes Bly has done a good job. Now is the time to put in the second laureate, one that will actually do the job because of a heartfelt need to promote this state’s poetry.

I would think Mr. Bly would be more than happy to end his time as laureate. It would provide him the precious seconds he loses to the job every year and, despite his being very, very healthy, there are the underlying myths surrounding masturbation:

• acne
• loss of sight
• hair on the palms of the hands
• the obsessive need to repeat every line of your poems again and again during a public reading.

© 2009 by D. Garcia-Wahl.