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 C

Carve

Craft Terms
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 remove excess language so that the poem’s essential shape emerges. Carving often produces concision, emphasis, and clearer negative space.

Detailed Definition
Carving describes revision as a subtractive art. The poet cuts away explanations, habitual modifiers, redundant images, and predictable transitions until the remaining language acquires contour. Like a sculptor revealing a figure within stone, the writer discovers that absence can define presence: a withheld detail may sharpen longing, while a shortened line may make silence palpable. Carving is not mere shortening; it is the deliberate creation of form through removal.
Example
Example in poetry:
To carve a poem is to remove general language until a precise image remains, changing “bird” to “wren on the fence wire”; A poet carves a strong line by cutting filler words from “I really do remember the way that you left” to “I remember how you left”; Carved diction can make a poem feel hard and exact, as in a description built from “stone,” “salt,” and “bone”; A carved stanza leaves deliberate white space so each surviving image carries greater weight.
Additional Notes
Carving involves cutting filler, repetition, explanation, or familiar phrasing while preserving the poem’s necessary pressure. It is not simply making every line short; sometimes a longer phrase provides rhythm or emphasis. Compare different versions and notice what disappears when a word is removed. The practice connects with compression, economy, and the use of negative space.
Also Known As
Sculpt Incise chisel cut engrave whittle
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