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.

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

Anacrusis

Musical Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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 pickup or upbeat is an unstressed note or group of notes that begins before the first full measure.

Detailed Definition
In music, an anacrusis leads into the opening downbeat, creating expectation before the main rhythmic pattern settles. In poetry, it can describe an opening syllable, phrase, or image that arrives before the poem’s regular metrical motion. A poem beginning with a light grammatical fragment may therefore feel as though it is already moving toward a stronger first beat, giving the opening urgency, incompleteness, or conversational lift.
Example
Example in poetry:
Anacrusis is an unstressed pickup syllable before the first strong beat, as in the opening “Once” of “Once upon a midnight dreary”; A poet can begin “In the dark” with “In” acting as an anacrusis before the main metrical pulse; In “To be, or not to be,” the opening “To” can be heard as a light pickup before the stronger rhythm; An anacrusis can make a line feel as though it is already moving before its first accented beat.
Additional Notes
In poetry, anacrusis is an unstressed syllable or group of syllables before the first strong beat of a line, often called a pickup. It can make a line feel as though it is already in motion before the regular meter begins. The opening syllables are usually not counted as part of the main metrical pattern, though poets may handle them flexibly. Compare anacrusis with a catalectic ending, which omits an expected syllable at the close of a line.
Other Meanings of “Anacrusis”
Also Known As
Pickup Upbeat
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