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 D

Deficient hexameter

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 hexametric line that falls short of its full six feet, often for rhythmic or expressive effect

Detailed Definition
Deficient hexameter is a six-foot metrical line—often dactylic in classical tradition or iambic in English—that is intentionally shortened by omitting one or more unstressed syllables, usually at the end (catalexis), resulting in a line that feels complete yet metrically reduced; this technique adapts classical forms to English prosody, creating rhythmic variation and expressive emphasis without disrupting the underlying hexametric framework.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hexameter lines missing one syllable; Six-foot lines shortened for effect; Epic verse with clipped rhythm; Classical adaptations in deficient hexameter
Additional Notes
A hexameter line with one or more missing syllables, disrupting the standard six-foot classical pattern. The deficiency creates variation in flow and can signal emotional hesitation or formal experimentation. Related to catalexis and classical hexameter. Contrasts with complete hexameter. Learners should scan lines carefully, marking where syllables drop, to understand how deficiency functions expressively.
Also Known As
Incomplete hexameter Truncated six-foot line Deficient dactylic hexameter Short hexameter Hypodactylic hexameter
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