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 I

Interactive dirge

Form
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 funeral poem incorporating dialogue—between mourner and deceased, or among mourners—to heighten emotional immediacy and communal grief.

Detailed Definition
An interactive dirge is an elegiac poem structured as exchange between mourners, between living and dead, or among perspectives on loss. This form distributes grief across voices, creating communal rather than solitary mourning while exploring multiple relationships to the deceased.
Example
Example in poetry:
Greek dirges in Aeschylus’ “The Libation Bearers” involve interactive mourning; Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” invites reader into shared grief; Contemporary poet Lucille Clifton’s “jasper texas 1998” uses interactive dirge addressing James Byrd’s murder; Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It” makes reader complicit in Vietnam Memorial grief; Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” transforms personal elegy into interactive dirge with reader as witness; Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City” uses interactive dirge blending Saigon fall with disco song.
Additional Notes
A mourning poem or elegy structured to invite reader response or participation in the grieving process, creating shared lament.
Also Known As
Dialogue dirge Conversational elegy Interactive lament Speaking mourning-song Dialogic elegy
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