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Guest Poet Shaula Evans


Woman Is Only A Recent Invention


With thanks to Kathy Drew and the women of WMST-L in July 1995.

I recently heard Ursula LeGuin read
an essay
that has yet to be published.
She started
with the assertion that she is a man
and recommends you take her
seriously.

As evidence of this,
she notes that she is a writer,
and a writer knows
which side *his* bread is buttered on.

She admits to not being
a very good man, but a man
never
the less.

Woman is
only
a recent invention.

Not that
it
hadn't been invented before--just never caught on.

You had your Gertrude Stein model and your Emily Dickinson model....
Now it is too late.

While she has been busy
trying to be
a man,
she has become an old woman

and old woman has not been invented yet.


June, 2002



Shaula Evans's questions:

1. This is a piece of found poetry. What is the best way to acknowledge the originator of the text?

2. Is there a more elegant / effective / poetic / appropriate way to handle the line breaks?


3. Does the title work?



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