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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we 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 E

Ecological mourning poem

Genre
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

Verse that grieves environmental destruction or ecological crisis

Detailed Definition
Contemporary elegiac poetry mourning environmental destruction, species extinction, ecosystem collapse, or climate change rather than human death. This emerging subgenre transfers traditional mourning conventions and structures to ecological contexts, expressing grief for lost natural places, extinct species, or damaged environments. Ecological mourning poems acknowledge environmental losses as worthy of the same formal mourning traditionally reserved for human death, creating space for collective environmental grief and often advocating for conservation or restoration.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Jorie Graham’s “Sea Change,” rising oceans mourn ecological loss; In Craig Santos Perez’s “from unincorporated territory,” coral bleaching becomes ecological mourning poem; In Brenda Hillman’s “Practical Water,” drought and pollution form ecological mourning poem; In Juliana Spahr’s “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache,” species extinction becomes ecological mourning poem; In Ocean Vuong’s “Time Is a Mother,” deforestation and war merge in ecological mourning poem.
Additional Notes
Contemporary elegy mourning environmental destruction, species extinction, or ecosystem loss rather than human death. Emerged from environmental movement and eco-criticism. Transfers traditional mourning conventions to ecological contexts. Growing subgenre as environmental concerns increase.
Also Known As
eco-elegy environmental mourning verse ecological lament green dirge Ecopoetic elegy
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