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, 1957 (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, 1960 (The Animal Has Drawn a Man) and Ezel mijn bewonder, 1964 (Donkey My Inhabitant). {Guernica Editions}