J. D. Salinger Quotes on Poetry
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'I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions'.
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It naturally follows that the creature you love next best is the person - the God-lover or God-hater (almost never, apparently, anything in between), the saint or profligate, moralist or complete immoralist - who can write a poem that is a poem.
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Extremes, though, are always risky and ordinarily downright baneful, and the dangers of prolonged contact with any poetry that seems to exceed what we most familiarly know of the first-class are formidable.
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The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.