If there is a place in Portugal where time and space work differently, where things have their own unique rhythm, and where the quality of the light seems to transport the visitor to another realm, then that place is most certainly the Alentejo. With these poets and the words they have left us, we can glimpse some of the history of a region unique within Portugal and perhaps within all of Europe. This anthology is intended, then, as a sort of map of the Alentejo, a map that cannot convey all of the truth of the region, but that aspires to convey something of the scenery and its way of life, its light and its hues, to the reader through the poems selected.