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

ambient pause

Device
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 strategic pause that deepens atmospheric mood, often creating space for reflection or enhancing the sensory texture of the verse.

Detailed Definition
Ambient pause describes a subtle, implied suspension in a poem's movement that occurs without punctuation or lineation to mark it explicitly. These pauses exist in the texture of the verse, suggested by syntax, sonic patterns, or semantic shifts rather than typographical signals. Ambient pauses create breathing space and rhythmic variation while maintaining surface continuity, allowing readers to sense momentary suspension without encountering obvious markers of hesitation or break.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ambient pause denotes strategic silence or breath that shapes rhythm: In Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” line breaks create visual and auditory pauses; Bashō’s haiku “old pond / frog jumps in— / sound of water” hinges on the dash-pause; Claudia Rankine uses white space as racialized silence in “Citizen”; Adrienne Rich’s caesuras in “Diving into the Wreck” mimic underwater suspension; Ocean Vuong’s line breaks in “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” enact emotional hesitation.
Additional Notes
ambient pause is a moment of silence or caesura that is not strictly metrical but is suggested by the surrounding mood or natural setting of the poem (the ambient atmosphere), allowing for reflection or a shift in focus.
Also Known As
Suspended pause Environmental pause Ambient break Atmospheric caesura
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