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

Clutch at straws

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

Clutch at straws: to make desperate, futile attempts to find a solution in a hopeless situation; rooted in the image of a drowning person grasping at anything, however insubstantial.

Detailed Definition
Clutch at straws means to seize on weak, unlikely, or desperate hopes when stronger options have failed. In poetry, it is especially effective in poems about illness, doomed love, poverty, spiritual doubt, political collapse, or grief. The straw image suggests something too slight to save a drowning person, so the idiom carries pathos as well as futility. It can reveal the human instinct to hope even against reason. A poet may use it tenderly, tragically, or ironically to show desperation at its last extremity.
Example
Example in poetry:
A despairing speaker might clutch at straws when the last ship vanishes; In a poem about grief, clutch at straws shows the mind reaching for any hope; The phrase suits moments of desperation and fragile belief; A poet could use it to criticise false comfort while still showing human need.
Additional Notes
Clutch at straws means make desperate attempts when hope is almost gone, as if a drowning person grasps floating straw. In poetry it carries strong pathos and physical urgency. It suits elegy, illness, failed love, political collapse, or spiritual crisis. Students should note the fragility of the straw: the idiom highlights not merely desperation, but the inadequacy of what is being relied upon.
Also Known As
Grasp at straws
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