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

Add to the mix

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

To introduce a new element into an already complex or varied situation, often complicating it further.

Detailed Definition
This colloquial idiom describes the act of compounding complexity, introducing variety, or escalating tension within an existing set of circumstances. In poetry, it signals accumulation—the layering of images, emotions, or perspectives that enrich or destabilize a lyric moment. Poets invoke it to reflect on creative process, social dynamics, or the chaotic beauty of multiplicity. Its informal register suits conversational free verse and contemporary poetry, where the speaker catalogues additions to an already overflowing scene. Thematically, it touches on abundance, confusion, diversity, and the unpredictable alchemy that occurs when disparate elements combine in life or art.
Example
Example in poetry:
In a catalogue poem about a troubled city, the poet might add to the mix the sudden beauty of a street musician, complicating the reader's settled judgment of the scene; The phrase suits poems of accumulation — works that build their meaning through layering, where each new element added to the mix shifts the whole; A contemporary free-verse poet describing a family gathering might add to the mix the unexpected guest whose presence changes every dynamic at the table; In a poem about creative process, the poet reflects on how adding a single unexpected image to the mix transforms a competent draft into something that surprises even its maker; The idiom works in ekphrastic poems about collage or assemblage art, where meaning is generated precisely by what the artist chose to add to the mix of disparate materials; A political poem about a protest might add to the mix the child's handmade sign, the elder's hymn, the detail that humanizes what could otherwise remain abstractly ideological
Additional Notes
This idiom is useful when a poem presents a situation as a blend of forces: grief, desire, history, weather, politics, or memory. “Add to the mix” suggests complexity rather than simple cause and effect. A poet might use it conversationally, but can also heighten it through kitchen, chemical, or musical imagery, where one new element changes the whole composition.
Also Known As
Throw into the mix Add into the equation
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