Dannie Abse Livres

Dannie Abse's rich mixture of Welsh and Jewish backgrounds, and his dual occupations of doctor and author, have led to what is widely regarded as one of the most readable, humorous and poignant autobiographies since the war.

Beautiful color reproductions. 212p. Measures 6.5x9.25 inches. Poets include Thomas Hardy, Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, William Carlos William, Auden, Rilke, Ted Hughes, and others. Works of art and artists include the Elgin Marbles, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, Giacometti, Turner, Rothko, and others.

WINNER OF THE WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN/ACKERLY PRIZE. It is an extraordinary document, painful but celebratory, funny yet often tragic, bursting with joy as well as sorrow and full of a deep understanding of what it means to be human.

This volume is an anthology of 100 of the finest love poems, including those by Shakespeare, John Donne, Shelley, W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Robert Lowell and Tony Curtis.

Combining criticism and reviews of the work of a poet whose career spans 60 years, this collection is an essential companion for studying the oeuvre of Dannie Abse. Covering his poetry and prose, this volume also contains specially commissioned essays. This marvelous representative selection of Abse’s own writings, together with criticism of his work, illuminates his achievements for both students and general readers.

Dannie Abse’s prose anthology draws together essays and autobiographical material spanning a lifetime of writing and practising medicine. We are treated to amusing anecdotes of Abse’s time as a trainee-doctor in wartime Britain, as well as more serious pieces on the Holocaust, Jewishness and the impact literature has had on his medical work. His detailed critical essays on poets ranging from Keats to Plath allow us to engage with his own poetic ‘I believe all poetry should be written out of a personal predicament and should be necessary; that there is an unconscious aspect to poetry, that it’s not all on the surface.’ The resounding voice, like that of his poems, is humorous, compassionate and civilised.

2013 marks Dannie Abse's 90th birthday. In his lifetime he has published an astonishing array of work including poetry, fiction, criticism, plays, and autobiography, but it is as a poet that he is best known and loved. In Speak, Old Parrot he returns to themes of loss, love, medicine and its moral implications, the nature of creativity, Jewish folk tradition, and the passing of time. The poems are observant of the outside world as well as the inner life and emotions, but most of all they are a joy to read.

Widely acclaimed for its warm humour, lyricism and honesty, as well as its accurate evocation of the 30s, this has become a classic. In this autobiographical novel, Abse interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backcloth of the times.