ABSE, DANNIE

(b. 1923)

   Welsh poet and playwright. He was born in Cardiff. He published his first volume of poetry while still a medical student. His Collected Poems, 1948-76 draw together his roles as Jew, Welshman, British poet, doctor, bourgeois family man, bohemian observer, pragmatist and mystic. In the collections Way Out in the Centre and Ask the Bloody Horse, he displays an affinity with midrashic, Hasidic, and kabbalistic legends.