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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

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.

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

cut-up poetry

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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 poetic form created by cutting up and rearranging existing texts to produce new meaning

Detailed Definition
Cut-up poetry is an experimental method pioneered by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin that involves slicing existing texts into fragments and rearranging them randomly or intuitively to generate new, often surreal, meanings; this technique challenges authorial control and linear logic, revealing hidden connections and subverting conventional narrative through aleatory composition and textual collage.
Example
Example in poetry:
William S. Burroughs’s “Nova Express” uses cut-up poetry by slicing and rearranging text; Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist method—drawing words from a hat—exemplifies cut-up poetry; Kathy Acker’s “Blood and Guts in High School” employs cut-up poetry from diaries and classics; Brion Gysin’s “Minutes to Go” demonstrates cut-up poetry through randomized newspaper fragments.
Additional Notes
cut-up poetry: A technique (popularized by William S. Burroughs) where texts are cut and rearranged to produce unexpected juxtapositions.
Also Known As
Found poetry Cut-and-paste verse Fragmented composition Collage verse
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