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.

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 A

acta non verba

Latin Phrases
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 Latin phrase meaning "deeds, not words," emphasizing that tangible actions carry far more weight and sincerity than mere verbal promises.

Detailed Definition
Acta non verba is a moral imperative valuing action over mere speech or promise. In poetry, it creates a productive tension, since poetry is itself composed of words. Poets engage this phrase either sincerely, urging readers to move from contemplation to action, or ironically, reflecting on the power and limitation of language. It appears in heroic verse, civic poetry, and poems grappling with the relationship between artistic expression and real-world consequence.
Example
Example in poetry:
Mao Zedong's revolutionary poetry and the tradition of committed verse from Neruda to Brecht all privilege acta non verba — the poem must lead to action, not merely beautiful speech; The tension between acta non verba and the poet's medium is a central irony explored by Wilfred Owen, who uses words to insist that words alone are insufficient response to the reality of war; Adrienne Rich's later poetry embodies the acta non verba ethic — she explicitly demands that poetry be answerable to political reality and human suffering; A student poet might be challenged to write a poem that enacts rather than describes — embodying acta non verba through form rather than merely asserting it in content; Bertolt Brecht's theatrical poetry is a sustained meditation on acta non verba, insisting that art must change the world rather than merely reflect it
Additional Notes
Acta non verba creates a productive and irresolvable tension when applied to poetry, since poetry is itself composed of words. This self-referential tension is one of the most generative in the entire poetic tradition: the poem that insists on deeds over words is itself a verbal artifact, which means it must either demonstrate its claim through its formal choices and effects or acknowledge the paradox explicitly. Students should consider the related question of committed or engaged poetry — the tradition from Shelley's political verse through the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary spoken word — where poets explicitly claim that their verbal acts are also political deeds. The tension between the word and the deed is also present in the Gospel of John's opening ("In the beginning was the Word"), which gives verbal acts a cosmic dignity that acta non verba implicitly challenges.
Also Known As
deeds not words actions not words facts not words
Skip to main content