A prelude-and-fugue-styled book by Douglas Hofstadter (but it seems all of them are in that style). As
billnye points out, the title literally means ``The Beautiful Tone of Marot'', but it is also a pun on
``Le Tombeau de Marot''---``Marot's Tomb''. Hence the cover art, which shows the poem ``À un damoyselle
malade'' carved into a tombstone.
I find some of Hofstadter's remarks on modern poetry a bit annoying. For
example, he expounds about his detest of modern free verse, in the writing of which, he claims,
the only creative decision is deciding where to put the line breaks (the implication being
that this is not really creative at all). To which I say, rubbish. One of the more difficult aspects of
writing poetry, in my opinion, is creating exactly the right texture. Many features of a poem
contribute to this; sure, meter and rhyme can create textures, but for some textures, those must be
dispensed with. Inserting line breaks, or even gaps between lines, are often an important part of
the texture of a poem. So I would rather Hofstadter had studied more modern poetry before he claimed
that modern poets were not really artists at all.
That criticism aside, however, I really enjoyed this book.