yeah, poetry

Some time ago I used to write poems. Now I don’t (at least not as often as before). When I was a young enthusiastic poet, one snobbish older guy (it was during a meeting dedicated to poetry, and he called himself a professional) ignored me and other young happy generation of poets, no, actually, he chose one or two persons and even agreed to place some their poems in an unknown paper after destroying it by changing something here or there … I thought poetry was about something different. Take, for example, Emily Dickinson, an American poet who changed the principles, in other words, there are no principles! You express your vision of the world, even grammatical mistakes have their role (isn’t the world full of mistakes?!). Accordingly, it is YOU and ONLY you that finds the meaning of the words and appreciates and likes it or not. By means of poetry one can descibe things one meets on one's way, and influenced by them expresses one's thoughts and feelings. Strangely, in my process of writing my thoughts are very often painted with dark gloomy colours. And it is usually unhappiness that provokes me to writing, let it be, "poetry". Does it mean that all poets or potential poets are pessimistic, not satisfied with life and miserable characters, the ones like Edward Stachura, who similarly to many other artists commited suicide? Do you really need to be a heart-broken suffering shadow of a man to be a poet, an artist? Possibly not, but it is often the case.