The poet is necessarily at once poet, historian, and philosopher. At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving. I'm not surprised that some people prefer books.
Books make sense.
The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own. Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate and captain of your soul. Even in the presence of others he was completely alone. Every life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is. Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world.