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

chessboard

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

Chessboard is the checkered board of sixty-four squares on which the game of chess is played.

Detailed Definition
Chessboard enters poetry as a geometric emblem of the ordered field of conflict and the alternating spaces of strategy. In literary tradition it symbolizes the world as a game. Poets use the chessboard to explore themes of the black and white, the positioned pieces, and the cultural metaphor of the board that has mapped the moves of power and fate in verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
The chessboard’s sixty-four squares become the world in poems of order and opposition; Verse places lives and empires on the checkered field of black and white; “He saw his choices arranged like pieces on the chessboard of the year” demonstrates mapped possibility; Educational examples show the board as the geometric ground of pure reason; Poets keep the image when every move must be answered inside a closed and perfect system.
Additional Notes
The chessboard’s checkered geometry has become a portable emblem of ordered conflict and binary opposition. Poets exploit both the board’s flatness and the hierarchical difference between black and white, center and edge. Instructors may invite students to notice how the same board supports both the literal game and the metaphorical chessboard of society or history. Related surfaces include the checkerboard and the merels board. The image rewards attention to the difference between the open board and the crowded endgame.
Also Known As
Chess Playing Field Strategy Board Checkered Surface Royal Game Board
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