  We propose a modification of the standard inverse scattering transform for
the focusing nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (also other equations by natural
generalization) formulated with nonzero boundary conditions at infinity. The
purpose is to deal with arbitrary-order poles and potentially severe spectral
singularities in a simple and unified way. As an application, we use the
modified transform to place the Peregrine solution and related higher-order
"rogue wave" solutions in an inverse-scattering context for the first time.
This allows one to directly study properties of these solutions such as their
dynamical or structural stability, or their asymptotic behavior in the limit of
high order. The modified transform method also allows rogue waves to be
generated on top of other structures by elementary Darboux transformations,
rather than the generalized Darboux transformations in the literature or other
related limit processes.
