A second thought about poems

 This is a second thought on Camille Paglia’s essay on Joni Mitchell’s poem “Woodstock.”

Why would I choose other poems? Why would I put other poems in my collection?

I suppose I had a different sensibility of the 1960s. I’m more interested in the movements that were behind the counterculture, rather than the counterculture itself. I’d think first of poems by Robert Hayden, Louise Glück, Gary Snyder and Yusef Komunyakaa.

But I’m not sure I’d go looking for poems that reflect an era — or whether that idea makes much sense.

Michael Dirda wrote an essay about Auden that gave a list of topics that interested him: “opera, cold weather, Mozart, ballet, Shakespeare, the moon landing, and the detective story.”

That kind of sensibility is closer to home for me. I don’t know why that kind of poet, one with broad interests, should be excluded in a discussion of the 1960s. I’d want to know what a poet has to say about cold weather, for example, regardless of the era.

Auden’s “Thanksgiving for a Habitat,” and particularly the section “The Cave of Making,” might be a good ’60s poem.

Here’s what I should have said about Paglia: She is a good critic. I don’t share her tastes and sensibilities. I disagree with many of her judgments. But she’s an expert at provoking second thoughts.

• Sources: Michael Dirda, “W.H. Auden,” is in Classics for Pleasure; Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, Inc., 2007, 174-9. The quotation is on p. 175.

Auden, W.H. Selected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson; New York: Vintage Books, 1979.