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

Direct address

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 rhetorical technique where the speaker directly addresses the reader, an absent person, or a personified abstraction (e.g., “O Death!”).

Explore this topic in depth (1)

Volta — A volta is a turn: the moment when a poem changes direction in its thinking, feeling, argument, perspective, tone or imagery. Though closely associated with the sonnet, the volta can occur in almost any poem and at almost any point.

Detailed Definition
Direct address: A poetic technique where the speaker explicitly addresses a person, object, concept, or audience using second-person pronouns or vocatives, creating immediacy and relationship. Direct address appears in apostrophe when addressing absent or abstract entities, in love poems addressing beloveds, or in political verse addressing readers. The technique creates intimacy, urgency, or rhetorical force by establishing direct speaker-addressee relationships. Direct address reminds readers that poems exist in communicative contexts, with speakers addressing audiences even when those audiences remain implicit. Understanding direct address reveals poetry's fundamentally dialogic nature.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” uses direct address to reader and self; In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” “I have always been scared of you” confronts father through direct address; In Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong,” “Ocean, don’t be afraid” addresses self as other; In Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,” “you” implicates reader in racial dynamics; In Lucille Clifton’s “blessing the boats,” “may you” offers benediction through direct address.
Additional Notes
Direct address speaks explicitly to a person, object, or concept using second person "you." This apostrophic technique creates immediacy and intimacy, making abstract subjects tangible through personal engagement.
Also Known As
Apostrophe direct invocation second-person address rhetorical address apostrophic address Vocative case Declarative verse vocative construction Audience Address address
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