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 E

estrange

Archaic Terms
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 verb meaning to alienate, make unfriendly or hostile; to remove from accustomed environment or turn away from familiar connections.

Detailed Definition
"Estrange" derives from Old French "estrangier," from Latin "extraneus" (foreign), meaning to alienate or make distant and unfriendly. While not exclusively archaic, its use in poetry often carries formal weight appropriate to discussions of emotional distance, political alienation, or spiritual separation. Characters become estranged from families, lovers, homelands, or selves through betrayal, time, or circumstance. Poets valued the word's ability to capture both the process of growing distant and the resulting state of alienation. Its Latin roots gave it learned dignity suitable for formal verse exploring themes of belonging, exile, and isolation. The term suggests gradual transformation from familiar to foreign, intimate to hostile, making it powerful for narratives of loss and change. Its continuing comprehensibility combined with slightly elevated register makes it effective in both archaic and modern contexts.
Example
Example in poetry:
The lovers were estranged by cruel misunderstanding; "Years of silence estranged the former friends"; To estrange means to alienate or make distant; Brothers estranged by quarrels over inheritance; The exile felt estranged from his homeland; Harsh words can estrange the closest companions
Additional Notes
Estrange appears throughout literature describing alienation in relationships, both personal and political. The term suggests active distancing or growing apart, with causes ranging from deliberate acts to gradual drift. Shakespeare employs it for family discord, political exile, and romantic cooling. Related to "strange" (foreign, unknown) and "estrangement" (noun). Etymology from Latin "extraneus" (external, foreign). Essential for analyzing relationship dynamics, exile themes, and the construction of otherness. The term implies previous closeness, distinguishing it from "alien" which suggests no prior connection. Useful for discussing family conflicts, political banishment, romantic betrayals, and how literature represents the process of becoming foreign to those once familiar. Modern psychology's "alienation" concept relates but lacks the personal relationship focus.
Also Known As
alienate separate divorce withdraw
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