Pondering Minutia and Criticism

I don't want to discourage people from just posting and nothing else... I'm sure they have reasons... I don't understand them, of course.  Any contribution is fine.  HOWEVER, you're wasting a massive opportunity to be part of something quite remarkable.  Commenting on other people's work invariably leads to an improvement in your own (unless you're only choosing to comment on poems you consider "easy" and not really putting any effort into it).  Taking part in discussions, whether they're about writing or just life in general, will spark inspiration, often from the strangest things.  One cannot write poetry in a vacuum.  (Emily Dickinson was a freak, and if you look closely you'll see that she wrote the same poems over and over again, just changing a few words -- but even the Divine Miss Dick read books, ergo no vacuum).  If you only read your own poems, you'll only learn what you already know and that's rather pointless.  Not to mention minimal.