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Long overdue . . . it will provide not only a cogent introduction for the uninitiated, but also fresh insight for the many enthusiastic readers, this reviewer included, of Dannie Abse's work. --Anglo-Welsh Review
A distinguished poet’s moving memoir of his wife, who died in a car accident in 2005. It is both a record of present grief and a portrait of a marriage that lasted more than fifty years. From the Hardcover edition.
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.
Welsh Retrospective is a selection of poems about his native Wales by one of Britain's most popular poets. Dannie Abse's Welsh and Jewish backgrounds have been essential to his writings. Wales and Cardiff, in particular, have haunted his imagination. In this revealing new book book he writes
The definitive anthology spanning from 1948-2014, complete with new poems, from multi-award winning Dannie Abse, one of Britain's most well-respected poets. This is the collection of a lifetime's work from one of Britiain's best-loved poets. Dannie Abse has published an array of work including fiction, autobiography and plays but he is best known, and critically acclaimed, as a poet. Dannie Abse collects together here the definitive jewels of his cannon. This volume comprises both a distinguished collection of his past work and a generous selection of new poems.
Dannie and Joan Abse had been married for more than fifty years when she was killed in a car crash in 2005. After her death he wrote his extraordinary memoir of loss, The Presence, which was the Wales Book of the Year in 2008. In contrast, much of this new collection is a delightful celebration. In it Dannie Abse returns to their marriage through all its seasons, and celebrates love in verse which is funny, tender and playful as well as serious and passionate. Almost half the poems appear in this form for the first time. 'One for sorrow, two for joy' is the old country saw about the magpie. These poems reflect its truth, and in the process transfigure ordinary life and love into something rich and strange.