All eight of Schierbeek's books of prose-poetry from 1951 on, which he termed “compositional novels,” have a musical form and content--words as notes in a sound-defined imaginal context. De gestalte der stem (The Shape of the Voice, 1977) is the first part of a mythologizing trilogy -- “to give shape to what man has formed on earth, what he's performed and deformed in it” -- the other books of which are Het dier heeft een mens getekend (The Animal Has Drawn a Man) and Ezel mijn bewonder (Donkey My Inhabitant).