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 G

Guide Words

Education
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

Guide words are words or phrases that direct a reader’s attention, clarify relationships between ideas, or signal movement in a text. They include transitions such as “however,” “therefore,” and “meanwhile.”

Detailed Definition
Guide words help students follow the logic and development of a poem, especially when its images or thoughts shift quickly. In reading instruction, they may identify sequence, contrast, cause, emphasis, example, or conclusion. A poet can use such language openly, as in an argumentative poem, or sparingly, allowing implication and juxtaposition to do the work. Studying guide words reveals how poems organize thought beneath their surface music. They appear in poetry education because recognizing these signals helps readers trace a speaker’s reasoning and write more coherent analytical responses.
Example
Example in poetry:
Students use guide words in a dictionary to locate unfamiliar terms from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins; A teacher demonstrates that guide words at the top of a page show the first and last entry on that page; While reading an archaic poem, students use guide words to find definitions for obsolete vocabulary efficiently; Dictionary practice with guide words helps poets choose among synonyms with different shades of meaning
Additional Notes
Guide words include transitions and framing phrases such as however, for example, meanwhile, and in contrast. In critical writing, they clarify the movement of an argument; in poems, they can create turns, temporal shifts, or ironic connections. Use them sparingly and precisely so they guide rather than over-explain the reader.
Also Known As
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