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



Illusion

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

A deceptive appearance or false perception that misleads the senses or mind; in poetry, illusion is a central theme, contrasting surface beauty with underlying reality, and exploring the fragility of human understanding.

Detailed Definition
Illusion in poetry weaves through magical realism, dream sequences, and unreliable narrators. Poets use it to explore desire, self-deception, or the limits of knowledge. It appears as mirages, mirrors, and fading forms, questioning what is real. Illusion enriches ambiguity, inviting readers to doubt and interpret. It can be beautiful or dangerous, as in love's idealization or political propaganda, and often dissolves to reveal harsher truths.
Example
Example in poetry:
Illusion in Margaret Atwood's "Postcard" exploits ekphrastic delusion, constructing an object without ontological reality; In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," illusion and reality blur; Romantic poets like Coleridge explore illusion through supernatural themes; Surrealist poetry uses illusion to question reality; In "Kubla Khan," Coleridge creates an illusory pleasure-dome; The poem "Delusion Soiree" invites the reader to a delusional party.
Additional Notes
Illusion in poetry weaves through magical realism, dream sequences, and unreliable narrators, exploring desire, self-deception, or the limits of knowledge through mirages, mirrors, and fading forms. In teaching, distinguish illusion from delusion: illusion is a deceptive appearance, while delusion is a fixed false belief. Illusion enriches ambiguity, inviting readers to doubt and interpret. It can be beautiful or dangerous, as in love's idealization or political propaganda. Students should examine how poets use imagery of reflection, mist, or shifting forms to convey the ephemeral nature of illusion.
Also Known As
Skip to main content