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. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

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

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

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 B

Beheaded verse

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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 line in which the initial unstressed syllable is deliberately omitted for effect

Detailed Definition
Beheaded verse refers to any metrical line that omits the first unstressed syllable of its expected foot, creating a truncated or inverted rhythm; commonly applied to iambic or anapestic lines, it produces a stronger initial stress that can convey urgency, abruptness, or rhythmic surprise.
Example
Example in poetry:
Beheaded verse removes the initial unstressed syllable of an iambic line, creating a trochaic start: “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!” (Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”); Shakespeare’s “Double, double toil and trouble” (Macbeth) uses beheaded lines for incantatory rhythm; Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” opens with a beheaded iamb (“Be-” dropped for emphasis); modern poets like Seamus Heaney employ beheaded verse in “North” to evoke archaic or ritualistic tones; the technique adds rhythmic variation and dramatic emphasis in lyrical or narrative verse
Additional Notes
Beheaded verse is a line of verse that is missing its initial unstressed syllable; synonymous with acatalectic or headless metre; often used to vary the rhythm or create a strong opening.
Also Known As
Headless line Truncated verse Acephalous verse Acephalic
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