"The Man Against the Sky" was written in 1916 at a time when all informed citizens in the Western world had begun to grasp the immensity of destruction wrought by political will and the new machineries of death unleashed during the First World War. As a poet, Robinson was also deeply conscious of a widespread devaluation of human life and a growing dismissal of the more subtle dimensions of human experience as encompassed by such terms as soul and spirit. Poems of this book are cited by critics as some of Robinson's best. Three Pulitzer Prizes for poetry were awarded to E.A. Robinson.