All of the poems are in triadic stanza form, sometimes "with a short fourth line to fill out the measure.

The crowning poem of the collection is "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," about which entire books have been written.

By far the longest piece in the volume at thirty pages, this four-part pastoral love poem was originally envisioned as the fifth book of Paterson.

He began writing it in 1952 in the midst of health problems—physical (a heart attack and multiple strokes that left him, among other things, with periods of near-blindness and partially paralyzed, able to type only with one hand) and mental (depression).

A different excerpt from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" was used in the fifth and final movement of The Desert Music, a composition for chorus and orchestra or voices and ensemble by Minimalist composer Steve Reich in 1984.