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

Anaphora

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

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginnings of successive lines or clauses.

Explore this topic in depth (4)

Repetition in Poetry — Repetition is one of poetry’s most flexible ways of making language memorable. It can establish a beat, return us to an idea, sharpen an argument or make the same words mean differently each time they come back.

The Sestina — A sestina is built from six end-words that return in a changing order across six stanzas and a brief closing envoi. Its pattern can look daunting on paper, but it is best understood as an audible cycle: familiar words arriving in new emotional and grammatical surroundings.

Villanelle — A villanelle is a tightly patterned poem built from two alternating refrain lines, five tercets and a final quatrain. Its repetitions do not simply repeat: as the surrounding language and situation change, the same words can gather pressure, doubt, grief, desire or surprise.

Free Verse — Free verse is not prose broken into short lines. It is verse that gives up a regular metrical pattern and predetermined rhyme scheme, while using lineation, cadence, syntax, repetition, sound and space to make deliberate form.

Detailed Definition
Anaphora: A rhetorical and poetic device involving the deliberate and deliberate repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more successive lines, sentences, or clauses. This technique serves to create emphasis, build momentum, establish a rhythmic pattern, and intensify emotional impact. By starting multiple lines in the same way, the poet draws attention to the repeated element and the ideas that follow it. Anaphora is a powerful tool for persuasion and can create a liturgical or chant-like quality in poetry. It is famously used in Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' and Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech. N. Scott Momaday uses it in "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee" with the repeated "I am" to construct a sense of selfhood and identity through a series of powerful metaphors. The device originated in Greek rhetoric and remains a potent strategy for achieving both musicality and thematic resonance.
Example
Example in poetry:
Anaphora repeats words at the start of lines; Ginsberg’s “Howl” uses it: “Who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking… / Who sank all night in submarine light…”
Additional Notes
Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines or clauses; it builds rhythm, emotional intensity, and emphasis—frequently used in prophetic, political, or lyrical poetry (e.g., Ginsberg’s “Howl”).
Other Meanings of “Anaphora”
Also Known As
Repetition Parallel opening Beginning repeat Rhetorical repetition Word repetition anaphoric phrase Initial repetition
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