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 B

Barter

Economics
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

The exchange of goods or services without money. In poetry, it can figure reciprocity, scarcity, or intimate obligation.

Detailed Definition
Barter names an economy in which value passes hand to hand without coin. A poet may describe a lover trading sleep for watchfulness, a farmer exchanging grain for labor, or a speaker offering memory for forgiveness. Such images can make need tangible while questioning whether affection, art, or survival can truly be measured and exchanged. The term is useful when a poem contrasts communal dependence with commercial calculation.
Example
Example in poetry:
“I traded my last apple for a lantern,” uses barter to show an exchange of goods without money; A speaker who gives a loaf of bread to a neighbor in return for firewood can make barter reveal mutual dependence during hardship; “The fisherman bartered silver trout for the potter’s blue bowl” uses concrete objects to create a vivid local economy; A poem may describe lovers bartering letters for promises, extending the economic term metaphorically to emotional exchange; In a historical village poem, farmers might barter wool, grain, and labor at the market, showing how a community functions without coins
Additional Notes
Barter predates coinage and depends on each party valuing what the other can offer, making it an effective poetic image for mutual need, unequal exchange, or survival under scarcity. A speaker may barter labor for food, memories for comfort, or silence for safety; such exchanges can reveal affection, exploitation, or debt. Notice whether the trade is voluntary and balanced, since an unequal bargain may suggest power imbalance. Related concepts include reciprocity, commodity, gift economy, debt, and transaction.
Also Known As
Trade by Barter Barter Trade In-Kind Exchange Swap commerce Exchange
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