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

Colloquial language

Diction
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

Informal speech patterns and vocabulary used in poetry for authenticity or immediacy

Explore this topic in depth (1)

Harlem Renaissance Poetry — Harlem Renaissance poetry brought new visibility to Black voices without settling on a single style or message. Explore its historical roots, varied forms and musical connections, with practical ways to read and listen closely.

Detailed Definition
Colloquial language in poetry refers to the use of informal, everyday speech patterns, idioms, contractions, and regional expressions to create authenticity, immediacy, and relatability; it grounds verse in lived experience, as seen in the works of Robert Frost, Philip Larkin, or contemporary spoken-word poets who reject formal diction.
Example
Example in poetry:
Langston Hughes’s “Mother to Son” uses dialect and everyday phrasing: “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair”; Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse” opens bluntly: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”; Charles Bukowski’s poems mimic barroom speech with raw, unfiltered diction; Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” captures teenage vernacular: “We / Left school. We / Lurk late.”
Additional Notes
Colloquial language in poetry uses informal, everyday speech patterns to create authenticity, intimacy, or realism; contrasts with aristocratic or elevated diction—key in conversational poetry and plain diction.
Also Known As
Informal diction vernacular speech common tongue everyday idiom conversational language Vernacular
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