There is a historical romanticized image of the poet as someone wandering throughout isolated mountain forests, like a hermit or monk, drawing his inspiration from solitude. This places poets in the same category as priests and sometimes even saints, groups that spend their time in a cloistered mystical contemplative state.
Poets are often considered similar to holy people, recluses who live alone in a cave or retreat sheltered from the hustle and bustle of daily life. This self-disciplined renunciation of society is considered necessary to achieve the mystical level needed for enlightenment.
For poets the same ideas seem to apply. In order to achieve the creative deep inner states needed to see life around us in a more connected way, we also need to spend our time in a watchful observation of the world around us, contemplating and examining it. And we usually have to be alone to reflect and ruminate on life.
While this is a rather idealized idyllic image of poets, it’s not too far from the truth. I do feel that as a poet, I need time alone to look at the world around me; time to ponder the small summer dragonfly that flits around my front door, as well as the stars in the large endless night sky stretching above me. I do my creative work best in seclusion, needing that time set apart from people and daily life distractions. This may not be true of every poet, but it probably is true for most. Some poets may want the stimulation of crowds to propel their writing forward. I’ve heard it said that some writers can write anywhere, anytime, even on a congested packed subway, and nothing will disturb them. That may be true for many fiction writers, but I don’t believe it works so well for poets. I feel like poetry requires more of an inward contemplative focus to achieve its creativity and craft.
With the current social isolation situation that we are still in, it seems ready made for poets to do their best work. We tend to thrive on being alone. I don’t like to use a negative world circumstance as a springboard to do good work from, but the practice of poetry is best done in isolation. And since seclusion is the current normal anyway, why not use the time well to its best advantage and get lots of new work done, new poems written.
Eventually, this pandemic will end. Wouldn’t it be nice to have lots of wonderful new poems that you wrote to show for all the time you spent in isolation?
At the end of this essay I’ve put a link to some poems about isolation by well known poets. I hope you will read some of them and be inspired to perhaps write your own poem about your experiences with social isolation. And, of course, keep on writing poems about whatever else inspires you.
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