system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius said he learned to abstain from rhetoric and poetry..

 I get rhetoric, but why would it be seen as beneficial to refrain from poetry? The direct quote is "[from Rusticus] to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing;"
gpt
From looking at a couple of different translations, it seems that the point is simply to favor plain speech, rather than give way to the temptation to make his arguments too complicated or honorific.

In other words, Rusticus may not have advised Marcus to altogether avoid poetry (or, for that matter, rhetoric and fine writing) so much as to avoid using their techniques to embellish his own speech when some simpler, clearer constructions would do.