Any reader can perform the written text of a poem, and indeed many poems need to be read out loud in order to make tangible the rhythm and sound patterning. But a poet’s reading of her or his own work has an entirely different authority. The poet’s performance, both live and recorded, poses an arresting issue for poetry, for the differences among the alphabetic, grammaphonic, and live are not so much ones of textual variance as of ontological condition.

(Bernstein 2009: 142)