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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we 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 O

opening verse

Structure
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

The opening line or stanza that establishes tone, theme, voice, or atmosphere, often serving as a gateway into the poem’s emotional or conceptual world.

Detailed Definition
Opening verse is the initial line or stanza of a poem that establishes voice, mood, rhythm, and subject with strategic economy; whether enigmatic (“Let us go then, you and I”), declarative (“I celebrate myself”), or narrative (“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan”), it functions as a threshold that invites, challenges, or disorients the reader, determining the terms of engagement for all that follows.
Example
Example in poetry:
Opening verse establishes tone, theme, or voice: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”); Whitman’s “I celebrate myself”; contemporary examples include Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” (“Ocean, don’t be afraid”); Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”; Langston Hughes’ “I, too, sing America.”
Additional Notes
Opening verse sets tone, theme, or voice for a sequence or collection. Related to introductory poem and opening flourish. Often reappears thematically—read it again after finishing to spot foreshadowing or ironic reversal.
Also Known As
Initial stanza Prologue verse Prelude lines Hokku
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