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 H

homeric epithet

Device
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 compound descriptive phrase repeatedly associated with a character, as in ancient Greek epic.

Detailed Definition
Repeated descriptive phrases characterizing heroes, gods, objects, or places in Homeric epic and similar oral-formulaic poetry. "Wine-dark sea," "rosy-fingered dawn," "swift-footed Achilles," and "grey-eyed Athena" exemplify how each significant element receives stock epithets used consistently throughout work. These formulaic descriptors aided oral composition and audience memory while creating ritualistic, ceremonial atmosphere through repetition. Anglo-Saxon kennings serve similar functions. Modern poets sometimes deliberately employ Homeric epithets to evoke archaic oral traditions or create deliberately elevated, epic tone.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Swift-footed Achilles" or "grey-eyed Athena"; Repeated descriptive tags for characters in epic; Stock epithets identifying heroes; Traditional formulaic descriptions in oral poetry
Additional Notes
The repeated descriptive phrases in Homeric epic: "wine-dark sea," "grey-eyed Athena," "swift-footed Achilles." Each character or element has characteristic epithets repeated throughout. Aided oral composition and audience memory. Anglo-Saxon kennings serve similar function. Modern poets sometimes use this technique for deliberately archaic effect.
Also Known As
stock epithet formulaic descriptor repeated tag characteristic phrase descriptive tag Epithet ancient epithet
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