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 F

Feghoot

Technique
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 short humorous poem or story that concludes with a clever, often groan-inducing pun that recontextualizes the entire narrative.

Detailed Definition
A feghoot is a brief, whimsical narrative—often in verse—that concludes with an elaborate, pun-based punchline, typically playing on names or phrases. Popularized by Reginald Bretnor under the pseudonym “Grendel Briarton,” it showcases linguistic playfulness and is valued in light verse for its clever subversion of expectations through wordplay.
Example
Example in poetry:
A feghoot in poetry might end a limerick with a pun like: “There once was a bard from Kent / Whose verses were truly heaven-sent / He rhymed ‘moon’ with ‘June’ / Then fainted at noon— / For his meter was badly bent!”; A humorous poetic feghoot could conclude: “Said the poet who wrote in iambic beat, / ‘My rhymes are quite hard to repeat— / I tried to write fast, / But my pen broke at last, / And now all my lines smell like feet!’”; A feghoot might twist a myth: “Apollo once tried to write free verse, / But his Muses just made him rehearse / Till he cried, ‘This is pain! / Give me meter again!’ / So he switched back to hexameter terse”; A feghoot in a sonnet’s couplet: “Thus ends my tale of love and woe— / My printer ran out of magenta ink, you know.”
Additional Notes
A feghoot is a humorous, pun-based short story or poem that ends with a deliberately groan-worthy pun or wordplay twist; coined by Reginald Bretnor under the pseudonym “Grendel Briarton,” it’s often used in light verse or speculative poetry; while not common in canonical poetry, it’s a useful exercise for students exploring wit, closure, and linguistic play; feghoots thrive on subverting expectations and can serve as creative warm-ups or parodies of more serious forms; related to shaggy dog stories but condensed into poetic brevity.
Also Known As
Pun Story Shaggy Dog Poem
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