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

binder

Farming
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 binder is a farm machine that cuts cereal crops and ties the stalks into sheaves.

Detailed Definition
The agricultural binder, widely used before the combine harvester became dominant, mechanically reaped grain and bound it into manageable bundles. Its arrival transformed harvest work by reducing the labour once performed with sickles and scythes. In poetry, a binder may mark the passage from hand farming to mechanisation, combining images of speed and efficiency with nostalgia or unease. Its clatter across a field can suggest technological progress, disrupted silence, and the changing relationship between people and land.
Example
Example in poetry:
The binder moves through ripe wheat, representing the mechanisation of harvest labour; Its clattering machinery can disturb the traditional silence of the countryside; A poet may contrast the binder with labourers once using sickles and scythes; A rusting binder beside a hedge can symbolise agricultural change and obsolete technology.
Additional Notes
A binder is a historical harvesting machine that cut standing cereal and tied it into sheaves before threshing. Its presence often dates a rural scene to the period between hand reaping and the widespread use of combine harvesters. Poets may contrast its clatter and efficiency with the rhythm of sickles, scythes, and communal labour. A rusting binder can represent technological change or obsolescence. Related terms include reaper, sheaf, harvest, threshing, tractor, combine, and mechanisation.
Also Known As
reaper-binder grain binder corn binder fixative
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