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

Ambigram

Constraint
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 word or design that retains meaning or legibility when viewed upside down, mirrored, or rotated.

Detailed Definition
An ambigram is a visual-verbal construct that reads the same or transforms meaningfully under rotation or reflection, often used in concrete or visual poetry; as a constraint, it challenges poets to consider spatial symmetry and perceptual duality, merging typography with semantics—this technique aligns with Oulipian interests in formal play and the materiality of language, where the poem’s appearance becomes integral to its interpretation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ambigrams appear in visual poetry like John Langdon’s rotational designs where “poem” reads the same upside down; Scott Kim’s ambigrammatic calligrams used in poetic book covers; a poem shaped as a Möbius strip where text reads identically when flipped; ambigram poems in Arabic script that mirror symmetrically; typographic poems where “life/death” transforms visually when rotated 180°; concrete poems by Emmett Williams using reversible letterforms to convey dual meanings.
Additional Notes
Ambigrams are visual-verbal constructs that retain legibility when rotated, reflected, or otherwise transformed—often used in concrete or visual poetry. While not traditionally literary, ambigrams exemplify constraint through symmetry and typographic ingenuity. Poets like John Langdon and Scott Kim have expanded their use into poetic contexts, where the dual readability enacts thematic doubling (e.g., life/death, self/other). For students, creating ambigrammatic poems requires attention to letterforms and spatial design; it’s especially relevant in digital poetry and interdisciplinary art. Ambigrams intersect with palindromes and mirror poetry but emphasize visual over phonetic symmetry.
Also Known As
Mirror word ambigrammatic word
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