Solitudo placet Musis, urbs est inimica poetis.
(Petrarch)

Solitude pleases the Muses, and the city is an enemy to poets.

(pron = soh-lih-TOO-doh PLAH-ket MOO-sees oorbs in-nee-MEE-kah poh-AY-tees)

Comment: This is a theme I recognize immediately from my readings in a certain
Roman poet--Horace. Horace writes one poem itself contrasting the life of the
city to the life of the country, and he even takes a shot at a character who
has the means to live in the city and the country (a primary dwelling and a
secondary for the tax folks!), but who, even when he can afford leisure,
prefers to stay in the city and do business.

Not so, the poet. The poet requires a space apart. The poet requires quiet.
The poet requires being left alone. The poet requires contact with nature. It
is only in the silence, the space, and in the company of wood and stream and
country air that the poet begins to hear the Muses as they inspire him or her
to create a work. And this work comes from another universe that lives within
the poet.

The poet is in some sense every single one of us. There is a part of us, in
rhythm with the rest of our lives, that thrives only when it has space, when it
has quiet, when it is left alone and honored, when it can hear birds, see trees,
touch the ground and feel the air moving.

Whether we create poetry or not, we do bring forth creative works in our lives,
and those creative works come from a universe within. When we produce them,
they make contact with others who need those connections, who might only in
those moments make contact with meaning through our creative works. In a
sense, then, we owe some poetic solitude to ourselves and to others.

Strange. We are so interrelated, so interdependent, but the life of our
interrelated lives depends on our finding time alone, to breathe, and to
connect with the Something-More. It is a rhythm that ancient poets always
knew.