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

Aesthetic poetry

Movement
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

Poetry aligned with the Aesthetic Movement, emphasizing beauty over moral or social aims

Detailed Definition
Aesthetic poetry prioritizes beauty, sensory experience, and formal refinement over moral instruction or social commentary, aligning with the “art for art’s sake” ethos of the late 19th century; such verse often features lush imagery, musical diction, and intricate patterns, as exemplified by poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne or Oscar Wilde, who sought to elevate poetry as a pure sensory and emotional artifact.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”); “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” (Keats, “Endymion”); “She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies” (Byron); “I died for Beauty—but was scarce / Adjusted in the Tomb” (Dickinson, aestheticizing death)
Additional Notes
Aesthetic poetry prioritizes beauty, sensory experience, and artistic form over moral or political messaging; linked to the 19th-century Aesthetic Movement (“art for art’s sake”) and poets like Swinburne or Pater.
Also Known As
Art-for-art’s-sake verse sensuous lyric decadent poetry beauty-centered verse Aesthetic movement verse Parnassianism
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