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

Comportment

Philosophy
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

Comportment denotes one’s attuned way of being-in-the-world, especially an open, receptive stance toward phenomena. It implies existential orientation beyond mere behavior.

Detailed Definition
Poetic language often embodies comportment through tone, rhythm, and attention. A poem’s posture—reverent, skeptical, mourning—shapes how it meets the world. This philosophical disposition infuses poetry with ethical and phenomenological depth, guiding how subjects and objects relate within the lyric space.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hölderlin’s hymns embody reverent comportment toward divinity in nature; Elizabeth Bishop’s precise descriptions in “At the Fishhouses” show patient, non-instrumental attention; Wendell Berry’s agrarian poems enact humble dwelling as ethical comportment; Li-Young Lee’s “The Gift” portrays gentle familial care as attuned being-with; W.S. Merwin’s late palm-tree poems practice receptive silence toward ecological loss; Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” ends with “You must change your life”—a call rooted in comportment before the artwork.
Additional Notes
Comportment (Verhalten or Befindlichkeit in Heidegger) describes how Dasein is affectively attuned to the world—through moods like anxiety, boredom, or wonder. In poetry, comportment manifests as tone: not what is said but how the poem “holds” its subject. Think of Merwin’s ecological grief or Oliver’s reverent attention. Unlike theme or argument, comportment is pre-reflective—it’s the poem’s existential posture. Students should analyze diction, rhythm, and imagery as disclosures of being-in-the-world. Related to intentionality, mood (Stimmung), and ethical demand, but more phenomenological than ethical.
Also Known As
Bearing Deportment Comporting
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