Selected texts – W. H. Auden, An unwritten poem

Of any poem written by someone else, my first demand is that

it be good (who wrote it is of secondary importance); of any

poem written by myself, my first demand is that it be genuine,

recognizable, like my handwriting, as having been written, for

better or worse, by me. (When it comes to his own poems, a

poet´s preferences and those of his readers often overlap but

seldom coincide.)

(W. H. Auden, An unwritten poem)