Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm
“All poets who, when reading from their own works, experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.”
"How to Tell a Major Poet from a Minor Poet" in The New Yorker (1938); reprinted in Quo Vadimus: Or, the Case for the Bicycle (1939)
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E. B. White 54
American writer 1899–1985Related quotes

“Not every poet is a great reader of his own work.”
Interview with Ernest Hibert (2006)

Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (December 1847/early 1848)
Context: Had Shakespeare and Milton lived in the atmosphere of modern feeling, had they had the multitude of new thoughts and feelings to deal with a modern has, I think it likely the style of each would have been far less curious and exquisite. For in a man style is the saying in the best way what you have to say. The what you have to say depends on your age. In the 17th century it was a smaller harvest than now, and sooner to be reaped; and therefore to its reaper was left time to stow it more finely and curiously. Still more was this the case in the ancient world. The poet's matter being the hitherto experience of the world, and his own, increases with every century.

“Literature is that which he can not read without pain, without choking on truth.”

About the letters from Balachander, in “His Master's voice 1 September 2010”

“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”
“…the work of a poet who has a real talent, but not for words.”
of The Listening Landscape by Marya Zaturenska; “Town Mouse, Country Mouse”, p. 69
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

We prefer “freedom”, we want to be as free as we can, but freedom and responsibility can go together. We’re responsible because we’re writers, and we’ve been at this all our lives…
On the poet having both responsibility and freedom in “Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” https://gulfstreamlitmag.com/archives/online-archives/current-issue-4/features/interview-with-juan-felipe-herrera/ (Gulf Stream, 2015)