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

Alternating tercet

Form
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 three-line stanza that alternates between different speakers, perspectives, or tonal registers to create dialogic or contrasting effects.

Detailed Definition
Alternating tercet is a three-line stanza that participates in a larger alternating pattern, whether of rhyme, rhythm, speaker, or thematic content. In some contexts, it refers specifically to tercets that alternate with other stanza forms, such as when three-line stanzas alternate with couplets or quatrains. The alternation creates structural variety while maintaining the tercet as a recurring unit, allowing poets to develop contrasting material in systematically recurring three-line packages.
Example
Example in poetry:
Dante’s terza rima (ABA BCB CDC) uses an Alternating tercet linking rhyme across stanzas; Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” adapts terza rima into English with interlocking Alternating tercets; contemporary poet Terrance Hayes uses Alternating tercets in “American Sonnets” to vary emotional intensity; the form creates forward momentum through its chained rhyme scheme; unlike standalone tercets, Alternating tercets demand structural continuity
Additional Notes
Alternating tercet refers to a sequence of three-line stanzas (tercets) that follow a regular, alternating pattern, often in their rhyme or meter, such as the ABA pattern of terza rima.
Also Known As
Rotating tercet Alternate triple line Interwoven tercet Antiphonal tercet
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