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

Atreus

Historical Figure
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

Mythical king of Mycenae, ancestor of the cursed House of Atreus, central to Greek tragic cycles.

Detailed Definition
Atreus’s feud with his brother Thyestes—marked by betrayal, cannibalism, and divine wrath—spawned generations of tragedy, including Agamemnon and Orestes. Poets invoke Atreus to evoke ancestral sin, inescapable fate, or the cyclical nature of vengeance in mythic and moral narratives.
Example
Example in poetry:
Atreus: Atreus’ myth of vengeance inspires poets to explore inherited guilt: “He served his brother’s flesh as meat— / and every son now bears the heat.”; His house becomes a symbol of cyclical horror: “The table set, the wine poured bright, / still tastes of blood from darkest night.”; Poets use his story to depict generational trauma: “The curse was not in sword or spell, / but in the silence, sharp as hell.”; His banquet scene becomes a metaphor for betrayal disguised as hospitality: “We feast with smiles, we toast with grace, / while poison simmers in the base.”; A poet might write, “Atreus did not kill alone— / he taught the world to eat its own.”; His myth teaches poets how to make myth visceral: “The children chew, the parents pray— / the same old feast, the same old way.”
Additional Notes
Atreus embodies the archetype of hereditary guilt in Greek tragedy; his curse upon the House of Atreus—marked by cannibalism, betrayal, and vengeance—provides the mythic backbone for Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Euripides’ Electra, making him a key figure for studying poetic cycles of retribution and the intersection of fate, kinship, and moral decay.
Also Known As
Atreus of Mycenae
Skip to main content