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

Fritz

Military
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

“Fritz” is British First World War slang for a German soldier or the German enemy collectively, often used as a generic name.

Detailed Definition
In Military poetry of the First World War, “Fritz” commonly refers to German soldiers, especially from a British perspective. The term turns an enemy force into a familiar, generic figure, much as “Tommy” could refer to a British soldier. Although it may sound casual or humorous, it can carry the distancing and stereotyped attitudes of wartime language.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Wilfred Owen’s “The Chances,” a soldier says that one member of his group “’Ad the misfortoon to be took by Fritz.” Here, “Fritz” means the German army or German soldiers who captured him. Owen’s use of colloquial soldiers’ speech makes the event sound grimly matter-of-fact: being taken by “Fritz” is one of the possible fates awaiting men who go “over the top.”
Additional Notes
“Fritz” probably developed from Friedrich, a common German male name, and became a generic British nickname for Germans during the First World War. In Owen’s line, “Fritz” is used collectively: it does not identify one particular German soldier but the enemy forces responsible for the capture. The term is historical slang and may be stereotyped or derogatory in modern contexts. It is best used when discussing First World War language, literature, or historical sources. Related wartime nicknames include “Tommy” or “Tommy Atkins” for a British soldier and “the Hun,” another British term for Germans that is generally more openly hostile and propagandistic.
Also Known As
German Soldier German Serviceman German Nickname Fritz the Hun
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