Home › Glossary › Letter T

Title page verse

Form
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 short poem or epigram placed on a book’s title page as introduction

Detailed Definition
Title page verse refers to short poetic inscriptions—epigraphs, dedications, or mottos—placed on or near a book’s title page to frame the reader’s approach to the work; functioning as a threshold between world and text, such verse often encapsulates thematic concerns, pays homage to influences, or establishes tone, as in the Latin epigraphs prefacing Eliot’s The Waste Land or Dickinson’s cryptic fascicle headings.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” often begin with title page verses like “Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?”; In early printed books, title page verses summarized content, as in George Herbert’s “The Temple”; Emily Dickinson’s fascicles sometimes included title page verses like “This is my letter to the World”; In “Leaves of Grass,” Whitman’s preface functions as title page verse; Contemporary chapbooks like Ocean Vuong’s “No” include title page verses that frame the collection.
Additional Notes
Title page verse appears on or as a book’s title page, often epigrammatic. Related to opening flourish. Sets tone concisely—analyze how it frames the entire work through implication rather than exposition.
Also Known As
Frontispiece poem Opening page verse Title leaf poem Frontispiece
Skip to main content