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 K

Keep the wolf from the door

Idiomatic Phrase
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

An idiomatic phrase meaning to secure basic necessities, avoid poverty, or maintain subsistence; predator-exclusion metaphor used in poetry to convey survival, resource management, or protective provision through threshold-defense imagery emphasizing economic vulnerability and resilience.

Detailed Definition
Keep the wolf from the door means to avoid hunger, poverty, or destitution through just enough income, food, or work. In poetry, the idiom gives economic hardship a predatory shape: want waits outside the home like a dangerous animal. It can describe families surviving on low wages, winter scarcity, debt, or precarious labour. A poet may use it to humanise survival, showing that ordinary provision can be heroic. The phrase is useful for exploring class, fear, domestic protection, and the thin boundary between safety and need.
Example
Example in poetry:
Survival: "They worked hard to keep the wolf from the door during lean times."; Basic: "Art helps keep the wolf from the door while feeding the soul."; Educational: "Highlights economic struggle in working-class poetry."; "Music kept the wolf from the door."
Additional Notes
Poverty avoidance, highlights basic survival in labor or family verses. Educational on resources. Suggests subsistence. Use in realist poetry. Contrasts with luxury. Enhances empathy. Pair with food imagery.
Also Known As
Keep food on the table Make ends meet Keep body and soul together Keep the bailiff from the door Keep The Wolf From The Doorstep
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