SOURCE: Mathias, Roland. “The Poetry of Dannie Abse: II.” Anglo-Welsh Review 16, no. 38 (winter 1967): 84-98.

In the following essay, Mathias examines the poems in Tenants of the House and Poems, Golders Green.

‘The Water Diviner,’ printed second in Poems, Golders Green, is one of several pieces in which Dannie Abse treats either of the predicament of poets as a class or of himself in particular.

Late, I have come to a parched land doubting my gift, if gift I have, the inspiration of water spilt, swallowed in the sand. 

He reflects that instead of transforming ‘amorphous mass’

so that the aged gods might dance and golden structures form 

he should have built

                                                  plain brick on brick a water tower. 

In other words, he chose to work on the discipline of form, to make available to himself the power and impetus of tradition, instead of ensuring the one thing necessary...