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

Apostrophe

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 rhetorical figure in which the speaker directly addresses an absent person, abstract concept, or inanimate object as if present and responsive.

Explore this topic in depth (5)

Epic Poetry — Epic poetry is not simply a very long poem: it is a flexible tradition of large-scale storytelling, shaped by performance, memory, writing and translation. This guide introduces its conventions, its many cultural histories and practical ways to approach an epic in print or in sound.

Ode — An ode is not one rigid pattern but a flexible lyric genre in which a speaker gives sustained, heightened attention to a person, object, place, idea or experience. It can praise, question, remember, mourn and think aloud.

Metaphysical Poetry — Metaphysical poetry brings love, faith, science, death and the body into unusually close contact. Its poets—especially John Donne, George Herbert and Andrew Marvell—make poems that think aloud, argue fiercely and discover emotional force in surprising comparisons.

Poetic Voice and the Speaker — A poem’s “I” is not automatically its author, and a poem can speak in more than one voice. This guide offers practical ways to identify the speaker, hear changes in tone and perspective, and base interpretations on the poem’s language and form.

Love Poetry — From the courtly conventions of the troubadours to the plain-spoken intimacy of modern verse, love poetry has never stopped changing shape. This guide traces its history and offers practical ways to read it closely.

Detailed Definition
Apostrophe: A rhetorical and literary device in which the speaker of a poem directly addresses a person, an abstract idea, a thing, or a personified concept that is absent, imaginary, or incapable of responding. The addressee is often personified as if it were present and able to hear and answer. This device is used to express profound emotion, lamentation, awe, or introspection, and to bridge the gap between the speaker and the object of address. The origins of apostrophe lie in ancient Greek and Roman oratory. In poetry, it allows the speaker to externalize complex feelings or engage in a form of soliloquy directed outward. Famous examples include John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," where he addresses the bird's "light-winged Dryad of the trees," and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias," where the speaker addresses the shattered visage of the statue. The use of apostrophe transforms the poem from a simple description into a dynamic, conversational exchange, giving voice to the speaker's deepest reflections.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Donne’s “Death, be not proud” directly addresses mortality as Apostrophe; Percy Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” invokes the wind as creative force; contemporary poets address absent lovers, cities, or abstract concepts (e.g., “O Algorithm, guide my feed”); Apostrophe creates intimacy with non-present entities; the device animates the inanimate, bridging inner and outer worlds
Additional Notes
Apostrophe is a direct address to an absent person, abstract concept, or inanimate object (e.g., “O Death, be not proud”); it heightens emotional intensity and is common in elegies, odes, and dramatic monologues.
Other Meanings of “Apostrophe”
Also Known As
Direct address Invocation Speaking to absent Calling out apostrophic address Speaking-to-absent figure O Rhetorical address address
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