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

Fluid imagery

Imagery
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

Images that shift, transform, or flow into one another throughout the poem

Detailed Definition
Fluid imagery: Images that flow, merge, or transform seamlessly into one another without clear boundaries or transitions, creating dreamlike or associative progressions. Fluid imagery contrasts with distinct, fixed images and appears in surrealist, symbolist, and imagist poetry where boundaries between images blur. This technique suggests consciousness's associative nature and reality's fundamental fluidity rather than fixed stability. Fluid imagery engages readers in active construction of meaning as images slide into one another, requiring interpretation of connections rather than passive reception of discrete descriptions. The technique reveals how poetry can capture perception's flowing, transformative nature.
Example
Example in poetry:
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” fluid imagery merges Thames mud, rain, and memory: “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song”; H.D.’s “Oread” commands the sea with fluid imagery: “Whirl up, sea— / Whirl your pointed pines”; Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips” uses fluid imagery of movement and freedom: “these hips are mighty hips”; In Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” fluid imagery connects bodies, language, and trauma; Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day” flows with grasshopper and light as fluid metaphors; Contemporary poet Safia Elhillo blends Arabic and English with fluid imagery of rivers and ink.
Additional Notes
Fluid imagery uses metaphors and descriptions that flow seamlessly into one another, creating dreamlike or surreal effects. This technique blurs boundaries between images, emphasizing transformation and connection.
Also Known As
Liquid imagery aqueous symbolism watery vision Amniotic imagery Aqueous imagery
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