Write poem-trees

Just came across this snippet from Billy Collins in a book of quotations intended for kids. Maybe this was weirdly abbreviated or taken out of context?:

"I think more people should be reading it [poetry] but maybe fewer people should be writing it. . . There's an abundance of unreadable poetry out there."

With all due respect to our nation's former Poet Laureate, I strongly disagree. Maybe fewer people should be submitting their poetry to literary journals of a certain caliber, but I firmly believe that MORE people should be simply writing poetry.

This reluctance to encourage poetry writing seems widespread. I had a high school English teacher who decided to entirely forgo a poetry unit because, "If you write it, I have to read it."

I believe that poetry is undervalued as an outlet for self-expression and as a vehicle toward self-awareness. For anyone under stress or experiencing hardship or grief, writing poetry can aid tremendously in the healing process.

It is one thing to sit in a writing workshop and critique a work of poetry. The authors intend for those poems to be read and critiqued as literature. But in general, I've always found poets to be generous spirits, and I don't think any one of them would knock someone for self-expression (fiction writers are another story). So write your poem-trees, and send them my way any time at all.