Lo, I do use a different name here than in "real life," and I make no secret about that and my Google-avoidance rationale. But try an experiment. Paste any line or distinctive phrase from any recent poem on the Deep End into Google, and you'll find that the Erato thread instantly comes up. I did this just now for about a dozen recent poems, and only one or two of them, for reasons that I don't understand, failed to come up in a quick search.
In some instances, the page that came up was a response that quoted the line, so it's not enough to delete the original poem.
I agree that the site itself should be something that people can find through Google, but I just don't think that anyone out there needs to be able to zero in on the precise language of every poem that is workshopped here. There's no legitimate function to allowing such searches, and, of course, there are legitimate reasons to object.
By the way, though I think it's unfair in a workshop context, I do think that publication on a blog is more like "real" publication, since it's being put out there as something for the general public to enjoy and savor, and blogs encourage traffic (with or without success), so I don't see how calling it a "blog" makes it any less publication than calling it a "zine."
(Children's book editors are among the strictest in not wanting any form of "prior publication," which is ultimately quite silly, since I can't imagine any way that workshopping a potential children's picture book on Erato could possible affect sales or dampen enthusiasm or demand for the fully illustrated book that may be based on that text.)
[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited February 13, 2008).]
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