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

Conceit Unconventional Metaphors

Metaphysics
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

Conceits employing unexpected, unusual, or striking comparisons between things that rarely or never appear compared in conventional poetry or thinking. The unusualness itself generates surprise and revelation.

Detailed Definition
Unconventional metaphors characterize metaphysical poetry's distinctive voice, replacing familiar comparisons with shocking ones that jolt readers into fresh perception. The audacity of these comparisons suggests that genuine insight requires breaking free from conventional thinking, that metaphysical truth lies hidden beneath habitual associations and familiar patterns.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Donne’s “The Flea” uses the unconventional metaphor of a flea for marriage; Emily Dickinson’s “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –” uses a gun as a metaphor for identity; George Herbert’s “Prayer (I)” uses “reversed thunder” and “church-bells beyond the stars” as unconventional metaphors; Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” uses Nazi imagery as a metaphor for patriarchy; T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock” uses the merman as a metaphor for alienation; Wallace Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” uses ice cream as a metaphor for mortality.
Additional Notes
Conceit Unconventional Metaphors defy decorum—comparing love to compasses or fleas shocks to provoke thought, defining metaphysical style through deliberate incongruity that yokes unlike realms.
Also Known As
Startling Metaphor Jarring Analogy Heterogeneous Yoking
Skip to main content