This Was Before by Ginny Lowe Connors

Ginny Lowe Connors is a retired English teacher and the author of four full-length poetry collections and a chapbook, Under the Porch, which won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. She runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books, and is co-editor of Connecticut River Review. Ginny has also edited a number of poetry anthologies, including Forgotten Women: A Tribute in Poetry. Learn more about her at www.ginnyloweconnors.com.

plgoodman:
You've nailed it, Ginny. I love the transcendent quality of this poem
Posted 03/27/2014 07:03 PM

TheSilverOne:
That painful and wonderful transition is so beautifully expressed here.
Posted 03/27/2014 11:14 AM

mimi:
such a perfect description of two lost places--adolescence and the way our world used to be...beautiful!
Posted 03/27/2014 09:07 AM

wyantjl42:
Very moving piece, especially the line: "An afternoon so ordinary she couldn't imagine its extinction." Also liked imagery of deferred development of the caterpillar vis a vis the narrator's sense of the end of childhood tranquillity and ordeals of adolescence.
Posted 03/27/2014 08:40 AM

njc:
Beautiful. Love the title, love every line.
Posted 03/27/2014 08:33 AM

Richard Greene:
A fine poem, show not tell, powerful observation and metaphor, the universal evoked by the specific.
Posted 03/27/2014 08:29 AM

Barry:
Great little poem. Love the last line!!
Posted 03/27/2014 08:17 AM

dmahoney:
Cheers to those afternoons so ordinary! As a retired English teacher, I could see students using this poem as a model to write their own poems about "this was before." Great last line!
Posted 03/27/2014 07:35 AM

Gilbert Allen:
My favorite phrase is "humming to the crusts / of her sandwich." Evocative indeed!
Posted 03/27/2014 07:19 AM

phebe.davidson@gmail.com:
I love the way this one draws its closing--how immediate, how forceful and full of perspective, and even how trivial all at once!
Posted 03/27/2014 05:36 AM