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

Guiding line

Structure
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 line that directs the reader’s attention or indicates thematic emphasis.

Detailed Definition
A guiding line is a strategically placed verse that subtly directs the reader’s interpretation of a poem by introducing a key image, philosophical stance, or tonal cue early in the text; it functions as a hermeneutic compass, orienting subsequent lines and helping to unify disparate elements—such as a single line about “light in darkness” that frames an otherwise fragmented meditation on grief or hope.
Example
Example in poetry:
Guiding line serves as a thematic or structural anchor: The repeated “So how are we doing?” in Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen”; Whitman’s “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” sets the course for “Song of Myself”; Dante’s “Midway upon the journey of our life” opens the “Inferno” with directional clarity; Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” uses “I came to explore the wreck” as guiding motif; Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” centers on self-address as compass.
Additional Notes
A line of a poem that establishes the main theme, metaphor, or structural rule for the subsequent lines or stanzas; essential for maintaining thematic coherence in complex or extended poetic forms.
Also Known As
guiding phrase directing line leading verse orienting expression anchoring line Beacon line indicator verse Leading line lighthouse line
Skip to main content