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 A

Aggression

Psychology
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

Hostile or destructive behavior arising from frustration, fear, or anger; in poetry, it can manifest as violent imagery, confrontational tone, or a dramatic force that drives conflict and character action.

Detailed Definition
In psychology, aggression refers to behavior intended to harm or assert dominance, often stemming from internal conflict or external threat. Poetry frequently explores aggression as a raw emotional response to injustice, betrayal, or existential angst, using vivid imagery and rhythmic intensity to convey inner turmoil or societal critique.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” the speaker’s aggressive tone (“I used to pray to recover you”) channels repressed anger toward a domineering father figure; In Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” aggression manifests as visceral condemnation of war’s brutality; In Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” aggression is implied through societal violence against civil rights; In Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover,” the narrator’s act of strangling Porphyria exemplifies pathological aggression masked as love; In Langston Hughes’ “Harlem,” the deferred dream “explode[s]”—a metaphor for pent-up aggression in marginalized communities; In Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting,” the hawk’s predatory monologue embodies naturalized aggression and dominance.
Additional Notes
Aggression in poetry often manifests not as overt violence but as linguistic intensity, metaphorical combat, or sublimated rage; rooted in psychoanalytic theory (Freud’s death drive) and behavioral psychology, it can serve as a vehicle for social critique or internal conflict; poets like Sylvia Plath and Robert Browning use dramatic monologue to externalize aggression safely; useful to distinguish between hostile aggression (intent to harm) and instrumental aggression (goal-oriented); in poetic craft, aggression may appear through caesura, harsh consonants, or violent imagery—consider how form mirrors psychological state.
Also Known As
Hostility Aggressiveness Belligerence Antagonism Invasion
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