O:JA&L Guides & Rubrics
O:JA&L Editors’ Processes for Reviewing Submissions
O:JA&L’s POETRY EVALUATION RUBRIC is a tool for the training and calibration of new editors and screening readers of O:JA&L poetry submissions. Using O:JA&L’s POETRY EVALUATION RUBRIC, O:JAL editors evaluate each submission across six weighted categories totaling 100 points, with scores ranging from 1 to 5 per criterion (see scoring notes). A poem is considered for acceptance when it earns at least 88 points overall, provided no evaluative category receives a score of 0 and flawed language conventions do not trigger automatic rejection. The editors read holistically but score analytically, assessing how form, structure, diction, theme, imagery, and unity of impression work together. The “Evaluator’s Narrative” represents the evaluator’s balanced assessment of features. High scores are interpreted by editors as a reflection of the writer’s consistent control, purposeful deviation, and artistic mastery, signaling readiness for publication. Editors and screening readers use the rubric until it is internalized.
Written Poetry
ANALYSIS & EVALUATION RUBRIC
Click on the title above to download the compact version of the O:JA&L Evaluation Rubric.
This rubric supports consistent, evidence-based evaluation of written poetry across form, diction, theme, imagery, and unity of impression. Evaluators should consider each category independently, then judge how the poem’s choices interact. Descriptors identify threshold, proficient, and masterful achievement while leaving room for varied traditions, aesthetics, audiences, and artistic intentions.
Scoring note: Evaluate language conventions in relation to the work’s purpose, audience, genre, and aesthetic choices. Do not penalize nonstandard grammar, punctuation, spelling, dialect, code-switching, fragmentation, or syntactic disruption when these choices are purposeful, controlled, and effective.
Scoring note: This rubric uses a threshold scale rather than a continuous five-point scale. A score of 3 represents the minimum acceptable performance for a category. A score of 1 indicates performance below minimum expectations, while scores of 4 and 5 indicate increasing levels of proficiency and mastery. Because 3 is the threshold for acceptable performance, no score of 2 is used. To calculate weighted points, divide the category score by 5 and multiply by that category’s maximum value. The six weighted values total 100 points.
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Language conventions and intentional usage |
1 Point Does not meet minimum expectations |
3 Points
Meets minimum expectations |
4 Points
Displays proficiency |
5 Points Displays mastery |
| Use when the evidence is absent, unclear, inconsistent, or substantially ineffective; identify the principal weakness that prevents acceptable performance. | Use when the criterion is recognizably achieved but remains basic, uneven, conventional, or incompletely developed; cite evidence of adequacy and a needed improvement. | Use when the criterion is achieved with consistent control and purposeful choices that clearly support the poem’s subject, intent, audience, and overall effect. | Use when the criterion is achieved with distinctive, sustained, and flexible control; choices feel necessary, deepen meaning, and create a memorable, fully integrated effect. | |
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LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS: Category score |
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| Weight |
5% |
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| Maximum weighted points |
/5 |
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| Evaluator’s remarks:
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| FORM Nonce form ☐ Received form ☐ | ||||
| Appropriate for subject | The adopted form obscures the subject, encourages omissions or oversimplifications, or interferes with the reader’s ability to make sense of the poem. | The adopted form makes the subject generally clear but does not yet support nuance, complexity, or sustained development. | The adopted form supports the poem’s treatment of the subject and allows theme, imagery, and meaning to develop without distraction. | The adopted form deepens the poem’s treatment of the subject and expands the poem’s range of meanings, resonances, and effects. |
| Appropriate for intent | The text does not follow the adopted form or genre in ways that meaningfully support the poet’s intent. | The text follows many conventions of the adopted form, but its formal choices are incomplete, distracting, or only loosely connected to the poet’s intent. | The text follows the adopted form with control, and its formal choices generally support tone, movement, and meaning. | The text uses the adopted form with technical control and flexibility so that form, tone, imagery, and meaning work together to strengthen the poet’s intent. |
| Appropriate for audience | The poem gives little evidence of an intended audience or makes formal choices that leave the audience without useful points of entry. | The poem appears to imagine an audience, but the form may be unfamiliar, inaccessible, or insufficiently prepared for those readers. | The poem uses a form that is generally accessible to its intended audience and helps readers follow the poem’s movement. | The poem uses or adapts form in ways that engage the intended audience and invite fresh insight into the subject, theme, and formal design. |
| Consistent | The text does not follow the conventions of the form or does so inconsistently; formal features disrupt diction, syntax, imagery, theme, or organization. | The text follows many conventions of the form, but the patterning is rigid, mechanical, or overly predictable. | The adopted form is consistent while remaining flexible enough to support theme, imagery, movement, and meaning. | The adopted form is consistent, flexible, and artfully manipulated to strengthen theme, imagery, movement, and meaning. |
| Deviations are purposeful, clear, and effective | Deviations from the adopted form appear random or cannot be understood as intentional. | Deviations are limited or only partly intentional, and their effect on the poem is unclear. | Deviations are intentional and mostly integrated, though they do not yet substantially deepen the poem’s larger purpose. | Deviations are intentional, well integrated, and aesthetically justified; they enact or intensify the poem’s larger formal and thematic purposes. |
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FORM: Category score |
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| Weight |
15% |
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| Maximum weighted points |
/15 |
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| Evaluator’s remarks:
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DICTION |
1 Point Does not meet minimum expectations |
3 Points Meets minimum expectations |
4 Points Displays proficiency |
5 Points Displays mastery |
| The poem’s word choice, register, phrasing, figurative language, and rhetorical features, when present, are precise, purposeful, and appropriate to the poem’s subject, intent, audience, and overall effect. | The poem relies on vague, imprecise, clichéd, inflated, or inappropriate language that weakens tone, meaning, imagery, or reader engagement. | The poem uses generally clear language, but diction may be predictable, uneven, inflated, or only loosely connected to the poem’s larger purpose. | The poem uses precise and appropriate diction that supports tone, imagery, theme, and movement. Figurative language and rhetorical features, when present, are mostly purposeful and integrated. | The poem uses distinctive, precise, and resonant diction that deepens tone, imagery, theme, and unity of impression. Figurative language and rhetorical features, when present, feel original, necessary, and fully integrated. |
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DICTION: Category score |
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| Weight |
15% |
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| Maximum weighted points |
/15 |
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| Evaluator’s remarks:
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THEME |
1 Point Does not meet minimum expectations |
3 Points
Meets minimum expectations |
4 Points
Displays proficiency |
5 Points Displays mastery |
| The poem effectively explores or relates to an important theme or organizing idea. | The poem does not establish a clear theme or organizing idea, or it approaches the theme so indirectly that the reader cannot follow or develop its significance. | The poem uses a recognizable theme or organizing idea, but its treatment is conventional, underdeveloped, or limited in effect. | The poem develops a clear theme or organizing logic that supports imagery, language, structure, and meaning. | The poem develops a distinct and compelling theme through an organizing logic that gives coherence to the poem’s movements and enlarges its intellectual and emotional range. |
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THEME: Category score |
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| Weight |
15% |
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| Maximum weighted points |
/15 |
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| Evaluator’s remarks:
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IMAGERY |
1 Point | 3 Points | 4 Points |
5 Points |
| Selected details and their arrangements create sensory force and meaningful points of connection for readers. | The poem relies on abstraction, generalization, or artificial scenes and offers few concrete details that connect to recognizable experience. | The poem includes images or scenes, but they are conventional, formulaic, or insufficiently connected to the poem’s purpose. | The poem presents concrete images and scenes that support theme, movement, and unity of impression. | The poem presents vivid, precise, and aesthetically satisfying images that deepen theme, sharpen meaning, and strengthen the poem’s overall effect. |
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IMAGERY: Category score |
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| Weight |
20% |
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| Maximum weighted points |
/20 |
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| Evaluator’s remarks:
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Unity of Impression
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UNITY OF IMPRESSION |
1 Point
Does not meet minimum expectations |
3 Points
Meets minimum expectations |
4 Points
Displays proficiency |
5 Points Displays mastery |
| The poem as a whole uses image, sound, structure, movement, and point of view to create a coherent intellectual and emotional effect. | The poem does not arrange its musical, dramatic, imagistic, structural, or point-of-view elements into a unified intellectual or emotional effect. | The poem relies heavily on conventional approaches to image-making, musicality, lyric structure, or narrative movement, limiting its overall effect. | The poem arranges image, sound, structure, point of view, and movement so that they support a clear and appropriate intellectual or emotional effect. | The poem organizes image, sound, structure, point of view, and movement in distinctive ways that create a unified, memorable, and compelling intellectual and emotional effect. |
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UNITY OF IMPRESSION: Category score |
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| Weight |
30% |
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| Maximum weighted points |
/30 |
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| WRITTEN POETRY: Weighted total |
/100 |
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| Evaluator’s remarks:
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Final Scoring Note: This rubric is intended as a guiding instrument rather than a substitute for informed critical judgment. Evaluators should apply it consistently and transparently while recognizing that effective poems may succeed through varied traditions, forms, dialects, cultural contexts, experimental choices, and aesthetic purposes. Final scores and remarks should be based on observable evidence in the work, the writer’s apparent intentions, and the degree to which the poem’s choices create a coherent and meaningful artistic effect.
Image: Tobermory Peregestes (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2026. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
BUTTONHOOK PRESS MASTERS SERIES
Click on the titles to explore or download the free PDF chapbooks.
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Ray Gonzalez on Prose Poetry
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The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Tom Hazuka on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Kent Dixon on Flash Fiction & Nonfiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Jim Meirose on Experimental Discourse
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O:JA&L’S HIGH BUTTON PRESS ART CHAPBOOKS
Click on the titles to explore or download the free PDF chapbooks.
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