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

Boustrophedonic enjambment

Device
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

Enjambment that reverses direction at line-end, mimicking ancient boustrophedon script

Detailed Definition
Boustrophedonic enjambment: A specific type of enjambment, a poetic device where a sentence or phrase continues beyond the end of a line, verse, or stanza, without a pause. Boustrophedonic enjambment applies the concept of boustrophedon (alternating direction) to the flow of a sentence across lines. In this case, a thought would progress across a line break from right to left, then continue from left to right on the following line, mirroring the zigzag pattern of the boustrophedon script. This would create a disorienting and unconventional reading experience, forcing the eye of the reader to move in a non-linear fashion across the poem. This technique would be highly experimental and would likely be used to mirror themes of confusion, fragmentation, or the disruption of linear thought. It pushes the boundaries of typography and syntax to create a unique interplay between the visual and semantic aspects of the poem.
Example
Example in poetry:
Boustrophedonic enjambment imagines lines reversing direction like an ox plowing a field, so the eye travels left-to-right and then right-to-left; A visual poem can place line one normally, line two reversed, and line three normally again to make reading physically turn; The technique recalls ancient boustrophedon inscriptions more than ordinary enjambment; Used for a maze, migration, or argument that doubles back, it makes page-direction part of meaning
Additional Notes
Line breaks that reverse reading direction, like boustrophedon writing. Experimental technique creating palindromic effects. Challenges linear reading expectations.
Also Known As
reversing enjambment ox-turning line break
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