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

Anachronism

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

The deliberate use of outdated or chronologically misplaced elements within a poem.

Explore this topic in depth (1)

How to Read a Poem in Context — Context can make a poem’s references, pressures and choices clearer, but it is not a substitute for reading closely. Learn how to begin with the words on the page, find relevant background, and return to the poem with stronger evidence.

Detailed Definition
Anachronism as a poetic constraint involves intentionally inserting words, objects, or references from one historical period into another, disrupting temporal coherence to create irony, commentary, or surreal effect; poets may use this technique to critique historical narratives, collapse time for emotional resonance, or challenge linear historiography—seen in works that juxtapose ancient myth with modern technology, thereby foregrounding the constructed nature of both past and present through deliberate temporal dissonance.
Example
Example in poetry:
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar features a clock striking—an anachronism since mechanical clocks didn’t exist in ancient Rome; Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” includes references to the god Mars in a medieval Christian context; T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” juxtaposes ancient myth with 20th-century London; Virgil’s Aeneid describes Carthaginian architecture using Roman imperial terms; modern poets like Seamus Heaney place ancient heroes in contemporary Irish settings; Anne Carson’s “Autobiography of Red” blends Greek myth with 1990s American adolescence.
Additional Notes
Anachronism as a poetic constraint involves the deliberate placement of objects, language, or ideas outside their historical period to create irony, critique, or imaginative fusion. While often accidental in older texts, modern poets use it intentionally—e.g., placing smartphones in Homeric epics or knights texting. This constraint challenges linear time and highlights cultural continuities or dissonances. Students should consider how anachronism functions rhetorically: as satire (Bulwer-Lytton pastiche), as postmodern pastiche (Carson’s “Autobiography of Red”), or as decolonial reimagining. It pairs well with ekphrasis and historical ventriloquism.
Also Known As
Historical anachronism chronological error
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