She can't help it,' he said. 'She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.

The line hinges on a deliberately jarring contrast: “the soul of a poet” suggests sensitivity, imagination, and a capacity for beauty, while “the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog” implies hardiness, suspicion, and a readiness to snap. Taken together, it sketches a character whose inner life is tender but whose outward emotional responses are rough, defensive, or feral—someone shaped by experience to protect that poetic core with aggression or cynicism. The humor of the metaphor doesn’t soften the judgment; it sharpens it, implying that her volatility isn’t a choice so much as a temperament (or survival strategy) that others must accommodate.