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

Bewilderment

Psychology
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 state of confusion or disorientation, often due to unexpected events.

Detailed Definition
Bewilderment reflects cognitive and emotional disarray when reality defies expectation. Poetry captures this through disjointed structure, rhetorical questions, or surreal imagery, mirroring the mind’s struggle to make sense of chaos, loss, or sudden change.
Example
Example in poetry:
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” bewilderment pervades the fragmented lines: “Between the idea / And the reality… falls the Shadow”; In Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel,” the speaker’s rapid transformation induces disorientation: “And I / Am the arrow”; In W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts,” bewilderment arises from the contrast between suffering and mundane indifference; In Hart Crane’s “Voyages,” nautical metaphors convey emotional and existential confusion; In Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish,” bewilderment gives way to awe as the speaker grapples with the fish’s resilience; In Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” shifting perspectives evoke cognitive bewilderment.
Additional Notes
Bewilderment—a state of confused disorientation—often signals cognitive or emotional overload; in modernist poetry (Eliot, Ashbery), it reflects fractured reality or identity; differs from confusion by its deeper existential quality; poetic techniques include fragmented syntax, non sequiturs, or shifting pronouns; useful for exploring liminal states (grief, migration, trauma); students should consider whether bewilderment is temporary (leading to insight) or chronic (indicating alienation).
Also Known As
Perplexity Disorientation Bafflement Confusion Puzzlement
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