Against plastic surgery: Why I never trust an old person without wrinkles

“Our earth in 1969 / Is not the planet I call mine,” W.H. Auden declares at the outset of his late poem "Doggerel by a Senior Citizen." While acutely aware of the youth revolt then transforming the culture around him, Auden makes it clear that he is perfectly happy being stuck in the past:Then Speech was mannerly, an Art,Like learning not to belch or fart:I cannot settle which is worse,The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith,Who dig the symbol and the myth:I count myself a man...