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.

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 C

Call a spade a spade

Idiomatic Phrase
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

To speak plainly and truthfully, without euphemism or deception.

Detailed Definition
Traced to ancient Greek comedy (via Plutarch) and popularized in English by Nicholas Udall’s 1542 translation, this idiom champions blunt honesty. In poetry, it signals narrative directness, moral clarity, or rejection of artifice—common in satirical or confessional modes. However, its modern racial connotations require contextual sensitivity; historically, it celebrated linguistic integrity. Poets like Philip Larkin or Audre Lorde might invoke its spirit (if not the phrase) to demand authenticity. Its value lies in contrasting poetic ornamentation with raw truth, making it a meta-commentary on language’s power to conceal or reveal.
Example
Example in poetry:
Auden’s “September 1, 1939” calls for moral clarity: “We must love one another or die”—calling a spade a spade; A confessional poem: “Enough euphemisms—I called my addiction a spade, not a ‘struggle’”; Ben Jonson praised plain speech: “Call a spade a spade, lest flattery rot the soul”; Contemporary satire: “Politicians cloak greed; poets call a spade a spade”.
Additional Notes
Traced to Plutarch’s Greek writings and popularized in Tudor England, this idiom champions blunt honesty. In poetry, it signals narrative directness or rejection of artifice—common in satire (Pope) or confessional modes (Lorde). However, its modern racial connotations require contextual sensitivity; historically, it celebrated linguistic integrity. Educators should guide students to distinguish the idiom’s original intent from problematic contemporary associations, and to explore how poets negotiate truth-telling versus tact, especially when addressing power or trauma.
Also Known As
Speak plainly
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