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

Chiastic design

Structure
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

A balanced literary pattern using inverted repetition of words or ideas.

Detailed Definition
Chiastic design refers to a poetic structure built on inverted parallelism—where themes, images, or sounds introduced in one sequence are mirrored in reverse order—creating a symmetrical arc that emphasizes a central pivot; this ancient technique, rooted in Hebrew and Greek rhetoric, frames transformation or revelation at the structural midpoint for heightened impact.
Example
Example in poetry:
Chiastic design maps poem as X-shaped structure: A-B-C-B’-A’ pattern in classical odes; in T.S. Eliot’s “Ash-Wednesday,” spiritual descent/ascent forms chiastic design; contemporary long poems use it for narrative symmetry; the form appears in biblical poetry (e.g., Book of Ruth); chiastic design conveys cyclical or redemptive arcs
Additional Notes
The formal use of chiasmus as a large-scale structuring principle for a whole poem or a major section; The entire work may be arranged so that the second half mirrors and reverses the thematic or structural points of the first; Related to Centering verse.
Also Known As
chiastic structure crossing design ring composition mirror pattern Antimetabolic structure
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