Tones/Countertones proposes formal verse translations of a large selection of well-known (and less well-known) poetry, drawn from ten centuries and five languages: Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and German. Included are short poems and excerpts from long poems by, among others, Vergil, Horace, Dante, Petrarch, Gil Vicente, Marot, Du Bellay, Ronsard, La Fontaine, Voltaire, Goethe, Foscolo, Leopardi, Musset, Baudelaire, Bécquer, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Rilke, Apollinaire, Supervielle, and Char. A thirteen-page introduction lays out, in some detail, the translator's methods and procedures, referring specifically to texts found in this volume and arguing that (despite reservations or even strong objections by critics—and poets—like Yves Bonnefoy) a poem's form is as essential as its content – and is, in fact, essential to its content. In an "Afterword," Roger Asselineau, a published poet and professor emeritus of the Sorbonne, writes: "Tones/Countertones, offering a broad sampling of Western literatures of diverse periods, is...in every respect remarkable: at once translation and poetry."