Trouble with Poetry Contests, and E-zines

I just wrote the following as a letter to an e-group of writers that I belong to (please contact me privately if you want the address to join, but it's pretty small, and unchanged since about 1994 or so). Anyways, thought it looked like a blog post, so I may as well put it up here.

I thought this was an interesting article about poetry contests. (warning: pdf file!)
http://rattle.com/eissues/eIssue5.pdf

It came from this post in a blog I enjoy reading:
http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2008_10.php#013576

I'm thinking about participating in a local e-rag. The problem with it, unlike even the most miserable and small-circulation zine, there's nothing to hang on to afterwards. Nothing you can point to on your shelf and say "I was published in that." Even my 1991 only-ever-published short story is in a neat glossy magazine in a file somewhere.

If it's halfway decent writing I think there'll be some audience. And I have been keeping a blog pretty regularly, all the way since 2004 (and I know a few of you do Livejournal, etc.).

Still, it's a little sad, and I don't even know if 'back issues' or archives of blogs or e-zines I like are even easily accessible. I usually don't even try: just reading the latest thing and then moving onto something else.