In this book Alberti conveys through his verses the frustration of being away from his Santa Maria Port. In his new location, the poet is not close to the sea, and that interferes with his mood, which turns gray given the distance with his friend the ocean.
The landscape known to the writer is far away, and with that remoteness his memories and his childhood stage which is the lost paradise. On the contrary, the city is revealed as a gray cage, in which boredom and nostalgia are poignant feelings in the heart of an Alberti who longs for what he has left behind and who is forced to feel the bitterness of a kind of exile that it eats from the inside.
In these poems of maritime longing it is common to observe marine elements as trades or technical names and light and images play a very important role. The sea, which is something of the town, is treated in a coherent way with meters inspired by popular poetry in which we can see parallels, repetitions, refrains and a host of traditional procedures that serve to express nostalgia in the most appropriate way to the subject.
More information - Rafael Alberti biography
Photo - The executioner's labyrinth
Source - Oxford University Press