What is the meaning of "bear"?

Question

Lowell: Certainly the danger of teaching is that it’s much too close to what you’re doing—close and not close. You can get expert at teaching and be crude in practice. The revision, the consciousness that tinkers with the poem—that has something to do with teaching and criticism. But the impulse that starts a poem and makes it of any importance is distinct from teaching.

Interviewer: And protected, you think, from whatever you bring to bear in the scrutiny of parts of poems and aspects of novels, etc.?

Lowell: I think you have to tear it apart from that. Teaching may make the poetry even more different, less academic than it would be otherwise. I’m sure that writing isn’t a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can’t be taught, it can’t be what you use in teaching. And you may go further afield looking for that than you would if you didn’t teach. I don’t know, really; the teaching probably makes you more cautious, more self-conscious, makes you write less. It may make you bolder when you do write.

Actually I don't understand the whole question, I would be thankful if you explain it to me.

Answer 1

In conversation speakers "springboard" off each other's utterances: each utterance takes the previous utterance as context and refrains from repeating what has already been expressed. In this case, the interviewer's question is understood to have the same subject as Lowell's last sentence:

LOWELL: ... [T]he impulse that starts a poem and makes it of any importance is distinct from teaching.

INTERVIEWER: And [the impulse that starts a poem and makes it of any importance is] protected, you think, from whatever you bring to bear in the scrutiny of parts of poems and aspects of novels, etc.?.

Lowell has said that although most poets make a living by teaching poetry, creating poetry and teaching poetry are distinct disciplines. The interviewer asks whether, in that case, the poet "protects" the creative process by refusing to apply ("bring to bear") the categories the employ when as teachers they examine ("in the scrutiny of") poetry.