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 I

Instructional poetry

Genre
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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

Verse that explicitly teaches a skill, concept, or moral lesson, such as didactic, gnomic, or aphoristic poetry; it blends instruction with aesthetic pleasure, aiming to edify as well as delight.

Detailed Definition
Instructional poetry conveys practical knowledge, moral lessons, or technical guidance through verse, blending didactic purpose with aesthetic form; historically used in farming manuals, medical texts, or ethical treatises (e.g., Virgil’s Georgics), it aims to educate while delighting, using rhythm and rhyme to aid memorization and engagement.
Example
Example in poetry:
Didactic poems like Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man”; Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst,” instructing on virtue and hospitality; Modern example: Danez Smith’s “not an elegy for Mike Brown,” teaching through witness; Poems offering life advice, like Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do…”
Additional Notes
Instructional poetry offers guidance, advice, or lessons—moral, practical, or philosophical—often in a didactic or proverbial style.
Also Known As
Didactic verse Moral instruction poem Pedagogical lyric Lesson stanza Educational composition Expository poem Teaching poetry
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