Rafael Guillén's poems paint vivid portraits of the land and people of his native Andalusia. In sharp-edged words tinged with a certain tender grief, Guillén presents the harshness and beauty of his country-the calm seashore and the violent revolutions, the wheat fields and the famine, the children and the laborers toiling under the oppressive Spanish sun. Behind the imagery and language a quiet force builds as Guillén reflects on coming of age during the Spanish Civil War and on love, life, death, and faith in modern-day Granada, Paris, and the United States.