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

Compound five-measure

Meter
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 metrical unit consisting of five combined or complex measures, often mixing different foot types; it creates a flexible, elaborate rhythm that resists simple scansion and adds expressive depth.

Detailed Definition
A highly technical metrical term from classical prosody describing five measures or feet combined into a single compound metrical unit. Rarely encountered in English verse analysis, this concept represents theoretical extensions of metrical complexity more relevant to understanding ancient Greek and Latin poetry than contemporary English verse. It demonstrates how classical prosody conceived of extended rhythmic structures.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Walt Whitman’s catalogs, five-part parallel structures (“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume…”) form compound five-measure; In Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” five-beat anaphoric lines (“who sank all night in submarine light…”) create compound five-measure; In C.D. Wright’s “Deepstep Come Shining,” five-line stanzas blend narrative, lyric, and documentary; In Muriel Rukeyser’s “Waterlily Fire,” five-part sections structure historical and personal layers; In Nathaniel Mackey’s “Splay Anthem,” five-measure lines weave myth, music, and migration.
Additional Notes
Highly technical metrical term from classical prosody. Rarely used in modern English verse analysis. More relevant for understanding ancient Greek and Latin poetry.
Also Known As
Quintuple measure Five-part compound Complex five-unit Epitritic pentameter
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