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.

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 H

Head and shoulders above

Idiomatic Phrase
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

An idiomatic phrase indicating clear superiority or distinction above others; uses physical height metaphor to convey excellence in verse, creating vivid spatial imagery that emphasizes unmatched quality or preeminence.

Detailed Definition
Head and shoulders above means clearly superior to others in quality, ability, beauty, intelligence, or achievement. In poetry, the idiom can create a visual hierarchy, making excellence appear physically taller than its surroundings. It may describe a beloved, poet, leader, landscape, performance, or moral quality. The phrase can be sincere praise, but it may also expose idealisation or social comparison. Poets can use it to explore admiration, envy, hero worship, and the risks of measuring human worth competitively.
Example
Example in poetry:
A praise poem may place one singer head and shoulders above the rest; In a comic scene, the tall hero is literally head and shoulders above the crowd; The phrase can show clear superiority; A poet might use it for moral height rather than physical stature.
Additional Notes
Head and shoulders above means clearly superior to others. The idiom uses bodily height to represent excellence, visibility, and distinction. In poetry, it can describe beauty, moral stature, artistic achievement, or social rank. Students should notice that vertical metaphors often carry value judgements: higher is treated as better. A poem may use the phrase sincerely, competitively, or ironically to question how superiority is measured.
Also Known As
superior
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