Welcome to the Monastery. A few things. When posting without logging in you actually get prompted to do so at after the 'preview' stage:

You aren't logged in.

Login, Create a new user, or hit "Create" to proceed in posting your node.

It's pretty hard to miss. If you aren't logged in you don't get to see posts which are yet to be approved. Once logged in you receive a message when someone replies to your post. Perhaps you should spend some time familiarising yourself with the monastery. See Understanding and Using PerlMonks from the tutorials section of the site.