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

blackjack

Games
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

Blackjack is a card game in which players attempt to reach a hand value of twenty-one without exceeding it, competing against the dealer.

Detailed Definition
Blackjack enters poetry as a modern symbol of individual contest against the house and the tension of hitting or standing. In contemporary verse it represents the solitary gamble and the dealer's edge. Poets invoke its cards and decisions to meditate on the thresholds of fortune, the courage to take another card, and the finality of the bust or the blackjack.
Example
Example in poetry:
Blackjack’s twenty-one and the risk of the next card appear in poems of threshold and excess; Casino verse stages the decision to hit or stand as a moral or existential choice; “He drew to twenty and the dealer showed blackjack” illustrates the narrow margin of ruin; Educational examples present the game as the solitary contest against the house; Poets use its totals when the count of a life approaches the fatal number.
Additional Notes
Blackjack’s pursuit of twenty-one and the constant risk of busting map cleanly onto any threshold that must not be crossed. The game’s solitary contest against the dealer emphasizes individual decision under pressure. In teaching contexts blackjack can illustrate the difference between games of pure chance and games that still require judgment. Related forms include vingt-et-un and pontoon. The image remains powerful because the perfect total is only one card away from ruin.
Also Known As
twenty-one pontoon vingt-un vingt-et-un
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