A preeminent social and political activist in pre-civil-war Spain who was recognized for his unflagging commitment to the Republican cause, Emilio Prados remains, nonetheless, a relative unknown within the context of contemporary Spanish poetry, and he has been relegated to the lower echelon of writers in the group known as the "Generation of 1927." The lack of critical attention to his work is mostly due to its breadth and complexity. Prados's opus includes almost two dozen published collections of poetry, in addition to several previously unpublished collections included in his Poesías completas (1975), and many individual compositions that appeared only in anthologies, newspapers, and journals. The deeply philosophical nature of Prados's poetry makes it difficult to penetrate, and only a few critics have taken the time to study his work in depth.

Unlike many of his generational colleagues, Prados was not born into or nurtured in the kind...