“A moment occurs (or should occur) when the growing artist is able to bequeath his tricks to his imitators. The mature writer rejects the treasured ‘originality’ and the darling virtuosities of his apprenticeship in art, as well as the showy sorrows and joys of his apprenticeship to life, often just in time. ‘How they live at home in their cozy poems and make long stays in narrow comparisons!’ Rilke once said, speaking of the run of versifiers who never change or grow. Once youth’s embroidered coat is cast aside, what is left? Only imagination, ripened insight, experience, and the trained sense of language, which are usually enough.”
Louise Bogan, review of The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden (1945)