Dammit! i was looking through this thread hoping someone hadn't posted this yet.
Although to the OP, first I used poles that were too long for me, which was a terrible experience, then I started going no poles for a year.
It felt pretty good, but after watching video of myself and seeing how unsteezy I looked, I switched back to using some little chopstick-sized poles. IMO using poles will almost always look a lot better than no poles, unless you have an ungodly amount of steeze (wallisch or dadali)