Reb Livingston had a blog post about whether poems posted on blogs count as being published. Cherryl Floyd-Miller responded on her blog and wrote that editors can’t have it two ways:

But the goddess Reb makes a good point. Those same publishers who reject us for having publised [sic] on a blog are often the same ones who tell us poets that publication on a blog does not count as a legitimate publishing credit on a resume or in a bio. Which way should it be? It can’t be both ways. You can’t discount the legitimacy of a poem because it’s been published on a blog and then turn away the writer for publication because the poem has been published on a blog.

Recently, I found a poem on a blog and asked the poet for it for 32 Poems. My request was that she remove it from her blog, and she seemed amenable to that. If she wants to put it back on her blog after it appears in 32 — preferably several months afterwards — I would be all right with that. Another poem appeared on a blog, was sent to me later (with a note that it had appeared on a blog and been removed) and I accepted that one, too.

My beef as an editor is when the poem is on the internet — blog or elsewhere — and the poet does not remove it before submitting it to me. My readers want work they can’t get elsewhere. This is what they pay for.

I have two groups for whom I work hard year round.

The first group is writers.

The other first group is readers.

If I don’t have happy writers and readers, then I don’t have a magazine.

If my readers can read the poems from 32 on blogs, why should they bother supporting us with a subscription?

Thus far, no writer has complained to me about our “rule” and we have not yet mentioned blogs in our guidelines. The issue — if you can call it that — has not been a problem for me as a writer or editor.

Do you feel strongly one way or the other?