This bilingual collection of 68 poems and two prose pieces surveys fifty years of the 1977 Nobel Prize winning poet's work. In addition, the book includes Lewis Hyde's introduction and a descriptive bibliography containing Aleixandre's own comments on each of his books, taken from their prefaces. Divided into five sections to represent different phases of the poet's writing, arranged chronologically, the poems reflect quite a range to the talent, from the early prose poems to the recent dramatic poems, from the hermetic and surrealistic to the perhaps most occasional, "On the Death of Miguel Hernandez," ("Don't Touch him. None of you could. He knew,/ only he knew,") to love poems like "It's Raining": "This evening it's raining, and my picture of you is raining. The day falls open in memory. You walked in. / I can't hear. Memory gives me nothing but your picture. / There only your kiss or the rain is falling." The translations, by Hyde along with 14 other translators, at their best manage to capture the sharp images and intellect of this amazing, renowned poet, who, at age 88, continues to write. This edition, the first paperback printing of the 1979 Harper and Row cloth edition (now out of print) is the only book of Aleixandre's poetry available in English currently. Highly recommended for all collections.

Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo (April 26, 1898—December 13, 1984) was a Spanish poet who was born in Seville.[1] Aleixandre was a Nobel Prize laureate for Literature in 1977. He was part of the Generation of '27. He died in Madrid in 1984.

Aleixandre's early poetry, which he wrote mostly in free verse, is highly surrealistic. It also praises the beauty of nature by using symbols that represent the earth and the sea. Many of Aleixandre's early poems are filled with sadness. They reflect his feeling that people have lost the passion and free spirit that he saw in nature.