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 P

Pentameter acephalous

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 five-foot line missing its initial syllable, creating sudden, jarring start

Detailed Definition
Pentameter acephalous is a five-foot line missing its initial unstressed syllable, beginning instead with a stressed syllable (a “headless” line); this variation creates a jarring or emphatic effect, often used to signal urgency or disruption within an otherwise regular iambic pentameter framework.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pentameter acephalous: John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” occasionally drops first unstressed syllable: “Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death”; Shakespeare uses acephalous lines for emphasis, as in Macbeth’s “Stars, hide your fires!”; contemporary poet Seamus Heaney employs headless pentameter in “North” for starkness; acephalous (headless) lines begin with stress, creating abrupt, forceful rhythm; common in dramatic or heightened speech; maintains five stresses despite missing initial syllable.
Additional Notes
Pentameter line missing first syllable; headless or truncated. Creates urgent opening or disrupted rhythm. Related to acephalous meter. Useful for variation in otherwise regular pentameter passages.
Also Known As
Headless pentameter Shortened five-foot Acephalous five-measure Truncated pentameter
Skip to main content