The book by Mikhail Yampolsky offers an unusual look at the work of one of the leaders of the modern Russian avant-garde, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov. Prigov is usually interpreted as one of the main representatives of Russian conceptualism. This approach emphasizes the importance of artistic gesture and self-reflection. Yampolsky is trying to show that behind the conceptual façade lies a full-fledged artistic world, which is not at all reducible to concepts and the play of ideas. Hence the criticism of the very concept of conceptualism and a keen interest in the poetics of Prigov’s texts, for example, in his proposed poetics of the transitivity of a sign passing through the medium carrying the text and creating a special temporality. Yampolsky examines the poetics of metaphorosis, Prigov’s use of the Aristotelian and Leibniz principle of entelechy in the genesis of texts, the focus on understanding affect as a formal component of creativity, and much more. As a result, a completely different, unusual figure of Prigov appears before the reader - the discoverer of new poetics that lie far beyond the boundaries of conceptualism.