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

Diffraction

Science
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

The bending and spreading of waves around edges or through openings. It can produce patterns of light, sound, or water.

Detailed Definition
Diffraction occurs when a wave encounters an obstacle, a narrow gap, or a boundary that changes its path. Light passing through a slit may spread into bright and dark bands, while sound can bend around a corner. Poets can use diffraction to imagine experience as something that refuses to travel straight: memory breaks into patterns, a voice reaches beyond a wall, or grief enters through the smallest opening. The term gives form to beauty created by interruption.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Through the rain, diffraction spread the streetlamp into a trembling halo,” uses the bending and spreading of light around small obstacles; A poem about sound can describe diffraction: “The bell’s note bent around the stone wall and found us”; “At the edge of the feather, light broke into colors by diffraction,” turns an optical effect into close observation; A poet might use diffraction as metaphor: “Grief diffracted one clear memory into many wavering lights.”
Additional Notes
Diffraction occurs when waves spread around edges or through gaps. It offers a useful image for sound, light, or feeling altered by obstacles.
Also Known As
Wave Bending
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