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

Contrary statement

Device
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 declaration that opposes or contradicts apparent or expected meaning

Explore this topic in depth (1)

Satire in Poetry — Satirical poetry can make us laugh, wince or feel implicated. This guide explains how satire works: from irony and caricature to persona, historical context and the crucial role of voice in performance.

Detailed Definition
A contrary statement in poetry deliberately asserts the opposite of what is literally true or expected, often to underscore irony, provoke thought, or reveal deeper emotional or philosophical truths through paradoxical expression.
Example
Example in poetry:
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” states: “I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife,” presenting cannibalism as reasonable; In “The Rape of the Lock,” Pope writes: “What mighty contests rise from trivial things!”—mocking epic conventions by applying them to a stolen lock of hair; Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” includes: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves,” a stark, contrary assertion of human nature; In Auden’s “September 1, 1939,” “We must love one another or die” presents a dire choice as moral imperative.
Additional Notes
A contrary statement asserts the opposite of what is expected or true to highlight hypocrisy, absurdity, or injustice; a key tool in satire and irony; often paired with understatement or hyperbole.
Also Known As
Paradoxical assertion Inverted declaration Reversal statement Irony
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