The poet uses music theory and history to explore the interweaving of language and music. In this verse, he seeks the delicate point between the voice of a singer (music) and that of a poet (language). An archicembalo was a complex sixteenth-century instrument, a successor to the harpsichord. The book is structured after a gamut, a nineteenth-century musical primer. Originally a single note on the scale, a gamut later came to mean a whole range-as in a singer or actor{u2019}s ability to cover the whole gamut. Gamuts were composed in a question and answer structure. Archicembalo is also set up as a call-and-response. Poems take off from each title (the question) and answer in exquisitely musical verses, metaphorical and rhythmical.