Morrison examines the legacy of the modernist poetics of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, as it relates to current theoretical orthodoxies, and traces its influence on the current crisis in post-structural literary theory. Morrison reads the politics of post-structural theory in relation to the socio-cultural arguments espoused in the poetry and prose of Pound and Eliot, and reveals a continuity between that theory and high modernism's tendency towards fascism.

Morrison concludes with a provocative analysis of deconstruction and the work of Paul de Man. Without reducing the political implications of poetry to mere caricature and without slighting the force and fact of literary mediation, The Poetics of Fascism will reshape the discussion of the social dimension of modernism.