SOURCE: Review of Remembrance of Crimes Past, by Dannie Abse. Publishers Weekly 240, no. 9 (1 March 1993): 51.

In the following review, the critic offers a generally positive assessment of Remembrance of Crimes Past.

Abse (White Coat, Purple Coat), a British physician, writes thoughtfully about medicine, ethics and the art of poetry. Much of the work is inspired by themes from his Jewish heritage that are generally handled with irony and dark playfulness. The book's title [Remembrance of Crimes Past]is a reference to a longish poem about the speaker's childhood, describing how he escaped his piano lesson to join other boys in the park and the teacher was then “dismissed.” This small crime stands out against the background of Hitler's Europe: “Later, only the landing light / under the bedroom door: / no hectoring voices, / no blameless man-sized scarecrow / being thumped down the carpeted stairs / with sovereign impunity / before Sleep's grisly fictions / and...