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

Depression

Psychology
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

Persistent sadness, emptiness, or loss of interest, often with physical and cognitive effects.

Detailed Definition
Depression pervades poetry as a felt weight—gray skies, heavy limbs, stalled time. Poets convey it through flat affect, monotonous rhythms, and imagery of drowning or numbness. From the melancholic tradition to contemporary confessional verse, depression becomes a lens for examining despair, isolation, and the struggle for meaning, offering readers cathartic recognition and a language for ineffable suffering.
Example
Example in poetry:
Depression in Sylvia Plath's "The Moon and the Yew Tree" describes depression through natural imagery; Gerard Manley Hopkins' "No worst, there is none" captures depression's highs and lows; Elizabeth Jennings' "What Depression Feels Like" depicts a woman negligent about her appearance and surroundings; Tennyson's "Mariana" explores longing, isolation, and despair; John Clare's poetry expresses intense longing for escape from depression; Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Woodspurge" describes heightened perception during psychic stress.
Additional Notes
Depression pervades poetry as a felt weight—gray skies, heavy limbs, stalled time—conveyed through flat affect, monotonous rhythms, and imagery of drowning or numbness. From the melancholic tradition to contemporary confessional verse, depression becomes a lens for examining despair, isolation, and the struggle for meaning. In teaching, distinguish depression from sadness: sadness is a temporary emotion, while depression is a persistent state affecting cognition and physical function. Poets often use seasonal imagery, especially winter or autumn, to externalize depression. Encourage students to examine how form—short lines, sparse language—mirrors depressive constriction.
Other Meanings of “Depression”
Also Known As
Melancholy sadness gloom dejection despair Melancholia Basin
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