On Twitter recently a writer wailed that she was about to give up writing because an editor had put down her work in rejecting it. I made a plea to her not to give the editor that kind of power over her and her ambition and her work itself. While I have no idea whether a general reader or poetry editor would consider her work valuable or not, I have learned to separate self from work. Sometimes the work stinks, and all the scrubbing in the world won't fix it. That doesn't mean you're a bad person or even a bad writer. It means it's time to turn to something else, to try another direction, to play or revise or resend to an editor with a very different set of literary priorities.
So whoever reads this, take heart. It can take a long time to find your readers, but if you're serious about your need to communicate in poetry for the sake of the poetry, don't give up until you do. Craft can improve, but it takes time to find your voice and resolve to get to publication.
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