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 E

Exordium

Technique
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

The introductory section of a poem or speech designed to capture attention and outline the theme.

Detailed Definition
The exordium, from classical rhetoric, hooks via vivid imagery or questions; in poetry like Pope's essays, it appears to orient readers, build anticipation, and establish ethos, setting the stage for persuasive or narrative development.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Milton invokes the Heavenly Muse in Paradise Lost's exordium to establish epic ambitions; Virgil's Aeneid begins with exordium announcing subject and requesting divine inspiration; The exordium of Wordsworth's Prelude explains the poet's struggle to find appropriate subject; An exordium might dedicate the poem to a patron or explain circumstances of composition; Classical exordiums establish speaker's authority and prepare audience for what follows; Edmund Spenser's exordium to The Faerie Queene announces allegorical intentions and seeks royal favor
Additional Notes
The exordium represents the rhetorical opening strategy designed to capture audience attention, establish the speaker's authority, and preview the poem's themes and arguments. Inherited from classical rhetoric, the exordium serves critical functions: it creates receptivity in readers, establishes tone and register, and provides necessary context for what follows. Milton's invocation opening Paradise Lost exemplifies the exordium's power—calling upon heavenly muses while declaring the epic's ambitious scope. The technique involves careful balance: the opening must engage without overwhelming, introduce without exhausting, promise without disappointing. Classical exordia employed specific strategies like beginning in medias res, posing provocative questions, or making bold claims. Modern poets adapt these traditions variously—some maintain formal exordia that announce themes explicitly, others create exordia through imagery and implication. Students should analyze how exordia establish contracts with readers about what kind of poem follows. Understanding exordia helps recognize how openings aren't merely beginnings but strategic rhetorical performances that shape everything following. The technique remains relevant in contemporary poetry that must capture attention in an age of distraction.
Also Known As
Introduction Preamble Proem
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