The situation in poetry since the seventeenth century is initially related to the problem of modernity, broadly considered. Literature is then shown to embody two contradictory impulses: On the one hand, it can be interpreted in terms of aesthetics, but at the same time it also expresses a hermeneutical drive toward wholeness, if not completion. This basic opposition can be related to the work of Kant, who argues for the difference between these two impulses, while rejecting their radical incompatibility. Hegel’s contribution to aesthetics and hermeneutics can be interpreted as a radicalization of what is already worked out in Kant. This book on modern poetry is then said to focus on the works of major figures in English and American poetry from Donne to Ashbery. Emphasis will be placed on how various works stage “reversals” in literary history, allowing us to view the history of literature as discontinuous rather than as supportive of unified readings. At the same time, the approach adopted will be dialectical in enabling reversals within consciousness to be better understood, just as it suggests how the reading of literature results in various changes to how the reader views the world.