> No other English poet wrote successfully in so many structural forms, or summoned so many of the language’s ancestral voices […] claiming as personal playgrou

> No other English poet wrote successfully in so many structural forms, or summoned so many of the language’s ancestral voices […] claiming as personal playground the entirety of English versification. An interesting example, not mentioned in the article, is Auden's "verse commentary" in Night Mail, a documentary by the General Post Office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0 (full film: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7utm3o https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7utm3o) Auden wrote his lines "timing the spoken verse with a stopwatch in order to fit it exactly to the shot". Wikipedia says the director Watt had only grudgingly agreed to the idea in the first place, but came around: > Watt cared little for Auden's fame and well known work, calling him "a half-witted Swedish deckhand" and complained of his frequent lateness during filming. Watt later wrote: "[Auden] was to prove how wrong my estimation of him was, and leave me with a lifetime's awe of his talent".