The Killing Jar

very nice quintet. It grabs attention in the first stanza with your excellent use of imagery and descriptive vocabulary. Truly a piece of art. I especially enjoyed the figurative language such as, "The sun's yolk bleeds into the sky."

I enjoyed this poem! The imagery made it a fun read, you have thrown in countless metaphors and all types of figurative language. I also like the meaning, and the diction - "dried", "tiny", that expresses the truly fleeting nature of hope. My only small critique is to try to be more purposeful with descriptions. The image should be cohesive, all words chosen carefully to build up the narrative, while personally I felt as though some of the language clashed. Good job, though!

Honestly fantastic work here. The imagery and language used really makes this a well made poem.

Wow. I liked the flow of that poem, to where it’d be awesome to hear your read it with your own voice as it’s the type of poem where the way it is vocalized does do wonders

I enjoyed the lines "On polished oak, it sits so still, as if by doing so it won't be seen."

There is quite a lot of tie in to the frustrations of the attempt to capture joy or hope in a bottle in your imagery choices which is an effective use of the metaphor of the butterfly. That was well done.

I thought your descriptiveness was good. I was able to follow it without getting lost. Overall I liked it.

I liked the versatility of your word usage, there was some real tossing from left to right and back going on amidst the lines. I felt like some of the imagery was a bit disjointed - was hope light, or a piano note, or some sort of bug? It made picturing the poem a little bit difficult. Was it a bird? A bird wouldn't fit in a jam jar (or I guess it would depend on the jar). Then again, you could see that as an interesting way to look at it - hope metamorphosing because of its very frailty. Also, hope as a topic is so abstract that I wish you would've treated it more meatily - for example, describing how you keep sending desperate letters from unrequited hope; maybe a stack of letters on the table. In general, this sort of very wordy but flimsy-in-substance poetry leaves me a bit cold. But imagery like "violent orange and peacock green on polished oak" is very refined. I would say your language is good, but try to bring some more grit and life into your topics.

Great work I really liked how descriptive it is

This is gorgeous! The wording is impeccable and I adore the imagery.

I was immediately very taken with this poem. I think it really captures hope as fleeting and fragile. Yes, the nature of hope does tend to be fluid, imo. The poem comes across as quite abstract and I believe that lends itself to the subject matter.

I will say: the piano imagery was a little lost on me. The reference to a piano note at the beginning brought my mind to a single key pressed in, a single note played. The reference to the bird on the piano later brought me out of the poem on my first couple reads.

I will confess, my first couple reads, I also struggled to keep up with which "it" was performing the action on several occasions in the beginning of the poem. (Disclaimer: I'm an amateur poet enjoyer, so that may have something to do with it).

This poem flows evenly, I feel that my inner reading voice was led through it fluidly. I think you did a fantastic job walking the line between abstract and absorbable. The wording comes across as precise and that read to me like the moments of clarity when hope can be seen amid the chaos of living. I enjoyed in particular, "a flickering star, a grain of salt". I loved that contrast.

Lastly, for me, I found that the line "push them in with it's feet" stood out as less meticulous than the rest of the work. It didn't keep the same evenly-paced flow in my brain. I'm afraid I'm not clever enough to offer you a suggestion for replacement or rewording.

Overall, I enjoyed this work thoroughly and I hope to see it again when it has been deemed complete c:

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