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

Autolysis

Viniculture
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

Autolysis is the breakdown of yeast cells after fermentation, contributing creamy textures and bready aromas to sparkling wines aged on lees.

Detailed Definition
In verse, autolysis represents transformation through decay and self-dissolution. The yeast giving up its substance to enrich the wine becomes an image of sacrificial creation. Poets may invoke it to discuss how loss feeds beauty, how death nourishes life, and how patience allows hidden depths to emerge from apparent ruin, mirroring processes of grief, maturity, and artistic refinement.
Example
Example in poetry:
Autolysis whispered in the lees, a slow decomposition the poet likened to bread rising in the dark; He wrote that autolysis gave the sparkling wine its brioche soul, a yeast-death that became flavor-birth; In her elegy for the dead yeast, autolysis was the alchemy of rot into richness, a funeral that feasts; The poet compared autolysis to the digestion of grief—time breaking down sharp edges into creamy acceptance; She imagined the lees as a silent classroom where autolysis taught patience to the young wine
Additional Notes
Autolysis is the biochemical process of yeast cells breaking down after fermentation has ceased, releasing intracellular components such as amino acids, enzymes, and polysaccharides into the wine, which imparts creamy, bready, and toasty notes that are especially prized in high-quality sparkling wines produced by the traditional method; this process occurs during the extended aging period on the lees (sur lie), lasting from several months to many years, and it softens the wine's texture, adds complexity, and contributes to the fine, persistent mousse of Champagne and its equivalents; for poetry students, autolysis offers a metaphor for transformation through dissolution—the death of the yeast giving life to the wine's secondary aromas, much as the poet's previous drafts and discarded lines fertilize the final poem, making it richer and more nuanced, a slow, invisible maturation that cannot be rushed.
Also Known As
yeast self-digestion autolytic breakdown savory release
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