Prunty's book is a reading of contemporary American poets using the phenomenological approaches of Heidegger and Husserl. His argument, begun with the reading of the work of Robert Lowell, is that contemporary poets, unlike their modernist predecessors, have adopted a sceptical stance and expressed that stance through the use of literary tropes that liken (simile) rather than tropes that equate (symbol and allegory). Prunty provides close readings of the works of such poets as Ammons, Nemerov, Justice, Cunningham, Creeley, and others.

Wyatt Prunty, Coleman Professor in The Writing Seminar, Johns Hopkins University