Food production remains the highest agricultural priority, subject to the constraint that it be done in harmony with nature, or at least with minimum environmental pollution. The amount of fertilizer applied can be controlled using modern application techniques, including soil and crop management, guaranteeing higher economic profit and lower environmental cost. It is in such a context that the present book addresses the efficient and rational use of mineral and organic fertilizers while preserving environmental quality. The book discusses the impact on surface and groundwaters, soils and crops, and experience of nitrate leaching, denitrification, ammonia volatilization, heavy metal pollution, agricultural and urban waste management, and international and national legislation. Audience: Agronomists, environmentalists, soil and food chemists, ecologists, policy makers, and managers in the fertilizer industry concerned with the trend of public opinion.

A splash of sea foam. A sly sparrow. A man dodging the rain. From such mundane, unexpected moments, Spanish poet Claudio Rodriguez crafted his 1965 "Alliance and Condemnation," a collection of poems that temper the joy of existence--the "bounty that turns my flawed breath into prayer"--with a questioning of empirical reality. In these pages are poems of love and hate, contrition and forgiveness, and the joys of sorrow and existence. Many of the poems are essentially parables that seem to address the immediacy of the world yet point beyond it toward philosophical and eternal values. The result is a conjoining of the real and the ideal, a frequent theme in Spanish literature. Many of these poems bridge the distance between the Spanish mystics, among them Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa, and the nature poetry of romanticism.
Of all his creations, the radiant poems in" Alliance and Condemnation "offer the best imaginable introduction to his extraordinary life and work.

The first substantial collection of Claudio Rodriguez's work in English offers the complete poems, in a bilingual edition. Translated by Michael Smith (also responsible for the Shearsman editions of Becquer, Vallejo and Rosalia de Castro) and Luis Ingelmo (who worked on the Becquer edition with Michael Smith), this is as good an introduction as it is possble to get for an unfamiliar, yet major literary figure. Perhaps the most important poet of the "50s" generation in Spain, Rodriguez's work deserves to be much better-known in the anglophone world.

Begun in 1939, barely four months after the close of the Spanish Civil War, these poems by the Nobel Laureate poet Vicente Aleixandre were written during a period of hardship and despair. In spite of his surroundings Aleixandre created the splendor of the shadow of a lost paradise that consisted of memory, nostalgia, yearning and illusion. This is the first full English version. The original Spanish text is included.