To be precise about Auden, the juvenilia is painful--more so than with Milton, Eliot, Plath & some other poets, but he explodes into greatness in his late twenties. His poems from 1935-1940 were consistently spectacular in my opinion. Some of his greatest work is after that period, but some of his worst too. Benzedrine, insecurity & fame took their toll from time to time.
Most poets, of course, should want to kill to write like Auden at his worst.
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