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

Albatross around one's neck

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

A burdensome problem or guilt that hinders progress, originating from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Detailed Definition
Coined in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1798 poem, the albatross—once a symbol of good omen—becomes a cursed weight after the mariner senselessly kills it, embodying guilt, penance, and spiritual isolation. In poetic tradition, this idiom powerfully conveys psychological burden, moral consequence, and the inescapability of past actions. Later poets adopt it to depict emotional baggage, societal shame, or existential dread. Its vivid maritime imagery and Gothic undertones make it especially effective in Romantic and modernist verse, where inner turmoil is externalized through symbolic objects. The phrase remains a cornerstone of literary allusion, illustrating how a single act can haunt identity and narrative trajectory.
Example
Example in poetry:
Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” directly inspired the idiom: the albatross hung around the mariner’s neck symbolizes guilt for killing innocence; In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” inherited trauma functions like an albatross—inescapable and suffocating; A contemporary eco-poem might state, “Plastic oceans: our generation’s albatross around the neck”; Modern elegies use it to depict grief that clings: “Her absence, an albatross I wear through every crowded room”.
Additional Notes
Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) cemented this idiom in literary consciousness: after killing an albatross—a symbol of good fortune—the mariner is forced to wear the dead bird around his neck as penance, embodying guilt that impedes spiritual and physical progress. In poetic usage, the “albatross” functions as a tangible metaphor for psychological burdens like shame, trauma, or moral debt. Contemporary poets often adapt it to address ecological guilt (“plastic oceans as our albatross”) or inherited historical sins. For educators, this idiom offers rich opportunities to discuss symbolism, Romanticism’s engagement with nature and sin, and the transformation of literal objects into emotional weights in lyric poetry.
Also Known As
Albatross Millstone around one's neck
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