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| The diverse literary output of the Welsh writer Dannie Abse, who has died aged 91, was considerable in both quality and quantity, and achieved in addition to the long hours that he worked as a doctor. Though he wrote in other forms, he was best known for his poetry, and it is remarkable for its consistency. | The diverse literary output of the Welsh writer Dannie Abse, who has died aged 91, was considerable in both quality and quantity, and achieved in addition to the long hours that he worked as a doctor. Though he wrote in other forms, he was best known for his poetry, and it is remarkable for its consistency. |
| Most of the works that appeared in 1989 under the title White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems, 1948-88 are distinguished by clarity of expression and formal accomplishment. In many cases they display a sense of mystery and wonder in confronting the magic that may be uncovered by the patient and acutely observant contemplation of the ordinary events and experiences of urban existence. | Most of the works that appeared in 1989 under the title White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems, 1948-88 are distinguished by clarity of expression and formal accomplishment. In many cases they display a sense of mystery and wonder in confronting the magic that may be uncovered by the patient and acutely observant contemplation of the ordinary events and experiences of urban existence. |
| One of his finest poems, Hunt the Thimble (A Small Desperation, 1968), uses the device of a children's game as an extended metaphor for the baffled, questioning human intelligence in the face of the perplexities of life, death and eternity. The dialogue between the searcher, representing limited human reason, and the other, anonymous, perhaps omniscient, voice, ends with this wonderfully haunting image: | One of his finest poems, Hunt the Thimble (A Small Desperation, 1968), uses the device of a children's game as an extended metaphor for the baffled, questioning human intelligence in the face of the perplexities of life, death and eternity. The dialogue between the searcher, representing limited human reason, and the other, anonymous, perhaps omniscient, voice, ends with this wonderfully haunting image: |
| In middle age, Abse, already a master of the short contemplative lyric, aspired to the production of longer, more intellectually ambitious works in verse. He attempted the first of these in The Smile Was (also from A Small Desperation), a big, affirmative statement that called on his medical experience for much of its content and imagery. This celebration of "that effulgent, tender, satisfied / smile of a woman / who, for the first time, hears the child crying the world / for the very first time" showed a slight list towards sentimentality. | |
| However, in Funland (1973) he discovered a form and linguistic strategy by which he could express a powerful, sometimes witty and finally disturbing vision of an existence threatened by violent disruption, if not annihilation, in the closing years of the millennium. The poem is written in nine sections of varying lengths and in flexible free verse, and an assortment of characters make their appearance. We meet the superintendent of an institution for the deranged, which is also a prophetic nightmare of the world we inhabit; Fat Blondie and the narrator's "atheist uncle"; Mr Poet and the man nicknamed Pythagoras. Mr Poet's public reading of his own work in the fourth section consists of the repetitive howling of a couple of obscene monosyllables; the superintendent dies and the narrator's uncle takes over, proclaiming he is immortal. Scientific rationalism, religious faith, art and even human love seem powerless against the advancing darkness and terror. The final section presents an apocalyptic glimpse of the abyss into which Funland must be engulfed. | |
| There are faint echoes of TS Eliot's The Waste Land in the poem. In Section 3, "Why should the peacock / stretch his wings" deliberately echoes his master's voice, as does the reference to "the ruined millionaire" in Section 6, but this is not to say that Funland is in any way imitative. It is a wholly original work and one that should last. | There are faint echoes of TS Eliot's The Waste Land in the poem. In Section 3, "Why should the peacock / stretch his wings" deliberately echoes his master's voice, as does the reference to "the ruined millionaire" in Section 6, but this is not to say that Funland is in any way imitative. It is a wholly original work and one that should last. |
| Abse's poetry is essentially traditional, and it is personal in that it reflects not only the author's preoccupations and aspirations, but because it carries in its rhythms the cadences of his physical voice. Both its strength and weaknesses stem from this individuality of expression. There are moments in a few of the lyrics where the charm becomes both self-conscious and a little over-sweet and the humour heavy-handed. But the best of his poetry merits him a place among the best of contemporary poets. It offers entertainment, deep feeling and thought, and its own quirky and memorable music. | Abse's poetry is essentially traditional, and it is personal in that it reflects not only the author's preoccupations and aspirations, but because it carries in its rhythms the cadences of his physical voice. Both its strength and weaknesses stem from this individuality of expression. There are moments in a few of the lyrics where the charm becomes both self-conscious and a little over-sweet and the humour heavy-handed. But the best of his poetry merits him a place among the best of contemporary poets. It offers entertainment, deep feeling and thought, and its own quirky and memorable music. |
| Dannie was born in Cardiff into a Welsh Jewish family, the youngest of the four children – three sons and a daughter – of Rudolph Abse, a cinema manager, and his wife Kate (nee Shepherd). His elder brother, Leo, became the flamboyant Labour MP for Pontypool. | |
| After attending a local grammar school, St Illtyd's college, and the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (now Cardiff University), Dannie trained as a doctor at King's College London, and Westminster hospital, where he qualified in 1950. His first book of poetry was After Every Green Thing (1948), and his first autobiographical novel Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve (1954). From boyhood and as a young man he was a keen cricketer and footballer, and he supported Cardiff City FC with unswerving loyalty. | |
| In 1951 he was called up for national service as a medical officer in the RAF, and the experience gave rise to another novel, Some Corner of an English Field (1956). At the end of the period Abse accepted a temporary commission on condition that he remain working at the RAF chest clinic in London. In 1954 he went to the Middlesex hospital, where he stayed for the rest of his medical career, as specialist in charge of the chest clinic at the Central Medical Establishment. | |
| There were further works with elements of autobiography, O. Jones, O. Jones (1970) and There Was a Young Man from Cardiff (1991), and two books of memoirs, A Poet in the Family (1974), which was then incorporated into Goodbye, Twentieth Century (2001). He also wrote a number of plays, which received their first productions at the Questors Theatre, Ealing, Birmingham Repertory theatre and the Young Vic in London, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. | |
| In the early 1950s he produced and edited a magazine, Poetry and Poverty, and subsequently compiled a variety of anthologies including Wales in Verse (1983) and the Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poets (1989). As an anthologised writer himself, his exclusion from Philip Larkin's Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse was one of the more outrageous omissions from that curious compilation, though it was to some extent rectified by the publication of half a dozen of his poems in DJ Enright's Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, 1945-80. | In the early 1950s he produced and edited a magazine, Poetry and Poverty, and subsequently compiled a variety of anthologies including Wales in Verse (1983) and the Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poets (1989). As an anthologised writer himself, his exclusion from Philip Larkin's Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse was one of the more outrageous omissions from that curious compilation, though it was to some extent rectified by the publication of half a dozen of his poems in DJ Enright's Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, 1945-80. |
| Running through all of Abse's work was a search for religious certainty, but he did not embrace either Jewish or Christian orthodoxy, although the iconography of both religions supplied him with useful imagery. From the early Epithalamion (Walking Under Water, 1952) to the later, less rhapsodic but no less tender lyrics, Abse was a poet of love, especially conjugal love. | Running through all of Abse's work was a search for religious certainty, but he did not embrace either Jewish or Christian orthodoxy, although the iconography of both religions supplied him with useful imagery. From the early Epithalamion (Walking Under Water, 1952) to the later, less rhapsodic but no less tender lyrics, Abse was a poet of love, especially conjugal love. |
| In 1951 he married Joan (nee Mercer), an art historian and author of a magisterial life of Ruskin. Their long and happy marriage produced two daughters, Keren and Susanna, and a son, David, and the books they edited together, Voices in the Gallery: Poems and Pictures (1986) and The Music Lover's Literary Companion (1988). | |
| Joan died in a car accident in 2005, and Dannie wrote of his subsequent torment in The Presence (2007). Happier times were recalled through the collection of love poems Two for Joy: Scenes from Married Life (2010). The collection Speak, Old Parrot was published last year, and a further one, Ask the Moon, is due to appear next year. | |
| Abse possessed great personal charm and had a wide circle of friends in Britain and the US, where he was visiting poet at Princeton (1973-74). | |
| He is survived by his children. | He is survived by his children. |
| • Dannie Abse, doctor, poet, novelist and playwright, born 22 September 1923; died 28 September 2014 | • Dannie Abse, doctor, poet, novelist and playwright, born 22 September 1923; died 28 September 2014 |
| • Vernon Scannell died in 2007 |