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

Frustration

Psychology
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

The feeling of irritation or anger from unmet expectations or blocked goals; in poetry, it appears as a driving emotion, often in dramatic monologues or narratives of thwarted ambition.

Detailed Definition
Frustration arises from thwarted agency. Poetry expresses it through staccato rhythm, rhetorical questions, or images of confinement, channeling the tension between desire and limitation into creative or destructive energy.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant,” frustration erupts at societal expectations of marriage; In Langston Hughes’ “Harlem,” frustration simmers in the question “What happens to a dream deferred?”; In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” frustration stems from inaction and indecision; In Emily Dickinson’s “I could not stop for Death,” frustration is absent, highlighting its contrast with acceptance; In W.B. Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan,” frustration inheres in the violent, transformative encounter; In Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck,” frustration drives the need to reclaim submerged truths.
Additional Notes
Frustration—blocked goal-directed behavior—often simmers beneath surface calm (Hughes’ “Harlem”); differs from anger by its inhibited quality; poets use metaphor (explosions, rot), rhetorical questions, or understatement to convey it; useful for students to analyze what is blocked and by whom; note its social dimension: systemic oppression generates collective frustration.
Also Known As
Irritation Aggravation Exasperation Discontent Impatience
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