There is no need to criticise a thing because of it being personal, who says we shouldn't write things personal? Isn't it a free world, perhaps if one is tied hand and foot to the protocol of poetry as stipulated by the...by whom I do not know.

"Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.  ~Eli Khamarov, The Shadow Zone"

I know that if you are to fence someone, you have to stick to the rules for fair play, otherwise you might end up dead(in the past anyway), then the rules are good for human beings, but why should something that pours from the heart and mind be this or that at all, isn't that up to the individual to decide?

Of course a thorough knowledge of the language one writes should be there, but not necessarily in the form required by acedemia, just as Robert Burns who wrote in colloquial Scottish was discriminated against, or Hans Christian Andersen who couldn't spell, so its not that important, what is is the quality of the art, the expression, and the manner in which it affects its audience, how otherwise can there be new thinking in poetry? 

If its to go into a particular style or academic predetermined metre, or whatever, then it has to conform, of course, but here we are learning the art of poetry, and do not know all the rules, and if we did, would we then be able to write poetry?  Maybe we too would feel so bound hand and foot, that our freedom of expression would become mannered and lack the very essence we describe as "art."
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The Poesieringen in Norway has just had someone who criticised a woman for sending in her description of her child who was born with Downs syndrome, and said it too was too personal, this resulted in enormous discussions and I wrote this to them after many detailed writes, by the various members:-

Dear A. and Poesieringens medlemmer.(members) 
A few of my thoughts about poetry with regard to the on-going arguments.

We are all different: "Vive la diffèrence" say I. When we write poetry its not always with the predetermined form and style, quality and character that is either tried or determined beforehand, it comes from the psyche, from the heart.

It can also be created as a craft object for perusal, but any art object without heart in it, is dead, it has a cynicism that deters our minds and thoughts from taking part in its character, when a poem grips us, from whatever psychological angle, it has its own song to sing, its rhythm, its rhyme, its music, as well as its meaning, and whatever its subject, can touch our senses not necessarily because of its content, but in its very existence, like a floating leaf down the river, moving and dancing on the currents, showing us the flow of nature in its own subtle language.

So we are again, as I say, all different and this variety of poetry entertains and informs, helps and brings out the best and the worst in us as all art can do; awake latent inspiration and add to this world an expression of what it is to be human.
** ** ** ** ** 

A few of what is out there in the way of quotes:-

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him:  "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul."  ~Soren Kierkegaard
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Who can tell the dancer from the dance?  ~William Butler Yeats
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Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.  ~Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.  ~Salvatore Quasimodo
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Poetry is life distilled.  ~Gwendolyn Brooks
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A poet's autobiography is his poetry.  Anything else is just a footnote.  ~Yevgeny Yentushenko, The Sole Survivor, 1982

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We don't read and write poetry because it's cute.  We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.  And the human race is filled with passion.  And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.  Dead Poet's Society
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I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.  ~Edith Södergran

We can add our own as we think fit maybe? This is fun what?

Ann.