Questions to ask yourself once you've finished reading a submission:

• Does the poem or story work for you? 

• Do you feel the premise of the story is worthwhile? Is it predictable, or cliched?  Is it trying too hard to be original?

• Does the poem or story grab you and get you emotionally involved? What engages you? Does it feel relevant? Is it focused, or all over the place?

• Does it seem to have a clear meaning? Is meaning hinted at too much? Does the author seem to be trying too hard for meaning?

• For stories: Is there rising action, crisis, and resolution? For poems: Is there some kind of emotional progression and resolution?

• For stories, can you pinpoint which character's story it is? Do you feel like you know the character well by the end?  Are the characters round or flat? Is their speech realistic? Do they act and react in realistic ways?

• Does it need less telling and more showing? 

For poems: can any images be sharpened? Should there be more images?  Do any images stand out too much and detract from meaning?  Do the images collaborate to form meaning, or is the poem just a collection of pretty images? 
For stories: Do you experience the story through the narrator's eyes, ears, etc? Or do you feel detached from the sensory experience of the story? Do you get a sufficient sense of setting? Are descriptions cluttered with images, and confusing? Are they vague or sparse? Do the chosen details add to the meaning of the story or are they parasitic, adding nothing?

• Is it wordy?  What words could be cut out to make the language sharper?

• Is the voice credible and engaging? 

• Does the language match the subject matter/point of view?  Think: diction, tone, mood, rhythm, rhyme, any other element of style.

• Does the structure work? 

For stories: is time flow handled well? Does it feel rushed or drawn out? Does it jump around too much? Are transitions between scenes smooth?  Should scenes be rearranged? Would it work better in a different point of view?
For poems: Do the line breaks work?  Are they arbitrary or meaningful?  Does each stanza flow well into the next?  Should the stanzas be rearranged?

Other things to remember:

For critiqees:  It's tempting to defend a piece by calling it self-expression, but good stories and poems are really more about communication than self-expression.  Don't be afraid to get rid of the parts you like the best in order to make your work communicate more effectively.  You can always save those parts for another story or poem in which they'll fit better. 
 

Thanks to Kirk Nesset and Max Schlaks, whose class handouts aided the creation of this page.