[Janice D. Soderling]

Crossposted with a bunch of folks.

I don't always, but sometimes, use the "no index" tag and a working title. But I am nonetheless always honest and aboveboard with the editors to whom I submit. I do not want to alienate myself from editors by attempting to deceive them.

What I usually say is this/these poem(s) "are my original work, not published in print or online in any literary journal, and not submitted to any other forum". (I rarely do simultaneous submissions, and when I do, I say so.)

When it seems a fuller disclosure is necessary--for instance I'm submitting to a new journal whose editorial policy I am not familiar with--I will perhaps add "this poem has appeared in a workshop forum in a version differing from the finalized poem now submitted.

It goes without saying that posting a poem that has some good intentions or qualities but fails to make it across the finish line, is good for all of us, for all participants. For the poet with a blind spot in her eye, for the newer learners who come to realize that there are differing opinions about what is lacking, and none or more than one suggestion to fix it may be correct. And for the old hands who relish digging into a failed effort to suggest ways to resuscitate it is a boon.

In short, that is the purpose of a workshop--it's not a vanity publishing site, it's a learning site, a discussion of possibilities.

Most of the poems I submit to editors have never been aired in previous workshopping. But when I get stuck (as with my current thread poem) and come to this excellent po-community to tell me what I suspect but am having a hard time admitting to myself (that I wrote a stinker and don't know how to de-stink it), I try to remember to preface it with a fake name and no-index-tag. Such a poem isn't something I want on my track record; it is not really a child I want to own up to birthing. It is a workshop item that I may or may not eventually succeed in turning into a decent poem.

I started using tags and false titles when some of my unfinished and abandoned poems/translations which were not (in my view) finalized, appeared in various blogs. Sometimes intact, sometimes with good lines reworked into another's poem. Sometimes with my name and sometimes without. I think using the whole poem with my name is meant as a friendly gesture, though it used to make me cross because only I can say when the poem is final or discarded.

Tags and fake titles are probably not of much use, they would not deter anyone determined to disregard etiquette, they don't wrap the poem in a cloak of invisibility, but are at least an indicator that I regard the poem as still in the pipeline.

Matt asks: How long do things remain on the internet? A long, long time. Which is why it is a good idea not to swear and insult and hurl nasty, misspelled, and ungrammatical phrases that will come back to haunt your character in years to come. (Not that I am accusing Matt of this: just making a general statement.)