V. Kozlov, a critic specializing in contemporary poetry, discusses the major issues plaguing this branch of the literary process: such as the ‘synoptic’ quality of modern critical work, vitriolic conflicts between guilds, absence of a publication with a comprehensive overview of the current developments in poetry, etc. The author finds that the biggest problem of modern poetic criticism is that, unlike the Western school of literary criticism, it is unable to take in the big picture of all ongoing developments in modern poetry, and its every attempt to reconstruct it is guided by its subjective perceptions. He suggests that this could be ameliorated if the critics would refer to the philological school and return to universal criteria for the sake of a holistic literary process.