When asked what she’d be if she weren’t a poet, Salter said: “I’m a writer because I’m not a composer. That’s what I’d really love to be — a composer of long, complex symphonies and operas! To produce the wordless power of music, to move people in that way, has always seemed to me the highest artistic goal. I’m stuck with being better at words.”
From a post on The Writer’s Almanac on poet Mary Jo Salter.