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

Cipher

Black American
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 cipher is a collaborative performance circle where participants exchange improvised spoken expression, often associated with hip hop verbal culture.

Detailed Definition
As a poetic concept, the cipher represents communal creativity, verbal competition, improvisation, listening, and performative identity formation. African American poetry influenced by spoken word and hip hop may adopt cipher dynamics through responsive structure, multiple voices, or competitive lyrical energy. The term highlights poetry as social event and oral encounter rather than solitary textual production.
Example
Example in poetry:
A spoken word circle where poets respond to each other’s lines demonstrates a cipher; A poem structured as verbal exchange between multiple performers reflects cipher culture; Hip hop inspired competitive improvisational poetry illustrates a cipher; A classroom exercise where students build a poem collaboratively can model cipher practice; Performance poetry with communal callouts reflects cipher energy
Additional Notes
The cipher as a poetic and performative space originates in hip hop culture, specifically in the freestyle rap circles where participants demonstrate verbal skill through improvised exchange. The cipher is democratic in structure — circular, participatory, governed by mutual respect and competitive excellence — and translates into poetic contexts as a model for collaborative composition, oral performance, and communal validation of voice. Students should understand the cipher as an alternative to both solitary lyric composition and formal academic workshop; it privileges immediacy, audience responsiveness, and communal energy. Related terms include freestyle poetics, hip hop poetics, breakbeat poetics, improvisation, and street vernacular.
Also Known As
Hip-hop cipher Rap cipher Poetic cipher
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