A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

Accentual-syllabic verse

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A metrical system that regulates both the number of syllables and the placement of stresses in each line, forming the basis of much English verse.

Detailed Definition
Accentual-syllabic verse: The predominant system of prosody in Modern English poetry, combining two elements to create a metrical pattern: the number of syllables and the number of prominent stresses within a given line. A poetic "foot" is a unit of meter consisting of a specific arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables, and the name of a meter combines the name of the foot with a prefix indicating the number of feet in the line (e.g., "pentameter" for five feet). For example, "iambic pentameter" describes a line composed of five iambic feet (each containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable), resulting in a total of ten syllables. This system allows for more nuanced control over rhythm compared to purely accentual verse. It became dominant during the Renaissance with the revival of classical meters and is used in a wide variety of forms, from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets to Milton's epic blank verse in Paradise Lost. The flexibility of having a set number of syllables but allowing some variation in the placement of stresses gives poets a rich toolkit for shaping tone and emphasis.
Example
Example in poetry:
Accentual-syllabic verse regulates both stress and syllable count per line; Shakespearean sonnets use this: “When I do count the clock that tells the time” has ten syllables and five iambic stresses.
Additional Notes
Counts both stresses AND syllables per line (e.g., iambic pentameter = 5 iambs = 10 syllables). Dominant English metrical system since Chaucer. Combines regularity with variation.
Also Known As
Syllable-stress verse Meter-syllabic Combined prosody Dual-count verse Dolnik Syllabo-tonic verse
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