Just to muddle the issue further.
The risk of proving plagarism is another issue. When poems are pruned, the only record that might show proof of ownership might be the googled records.
A week or so ago, I noticed at a web journal a published poem which was very similar to a poem I remembered from a workship (not here, on another site). It just so happened that I remember the author as well, because it is an author whose work I like. But the published poem was by a name I did not recognize.
With regular pruning, as we have here, there is no record of the poem having been workshopped EXCEPT through a googled record.
I don't publicly post the work I am most proud of, but I am very happy to have access to clever people to rework poems that I can't straighten out on my own. Sometimes this excellent help from my peers will allow me to turn duds into "real" poems i.e. make them publishable.
But then the next problem arises, EITHER find a friendly editor who won't mind (some indeed say that they prefer getting workshopped poems as such poems tend to be higher quality).
OR save it for publication in a context where it will not matter, a chapbook or a future collection.
After seeing that near look-alike poem, I think there are advantages in googling.
I also read recently somewhere about a young poet who had won a contest and googled herself just to see what came up and found that her winning poem had won two other contests under someone else's name. So there are both advantages and disadvantages with these creepy-crawlies.
It does help one keep a protective eye on one's work.
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