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

Intergenerational trauma

Black American
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

Intergenerational trauma refers to the transmission of psychological, emotional, or cultural wounds across generations shaped by historical oppression and unresolved collective suffering.

Detailed Definition
African American poetry often explores how slavery, racial violence, displacement, exclusion, and systemic injustice continue to affect descendants long after original events. The concept helps explain recurring motifs of inherited fear, silence, fragmented memory, bodily anxiety, and ancestral grief. Poets use such themes to show that historical violence is not confined to the past but remains embedded in identity, family narratives, and communal consciousness.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem describing inherited fear from slavery illustrates intergenerational trauma; Natasha Trethewey’s family history poems often engage intergenerational trauma; Verse showing ancestral pain resurfacing in descendants reflects intergenerational trauma; A poem about inherited silence after racial violence demonstrates intergenerational trauma; Poetry linking past injustice to present emotional wounds reflects intergenerational trauma
Additional Notes
Intergenerational trauma, as a concept applied to African American communities, refers to the ways in which unresolved historical traumas — slavery, lynching, segregation, mass incarceration — are transmitted psychologically, culturally, and potentially epigenetically across generations. In poetry, intergenerational trauma manifests as the haunting of the present by the past, the re-enactment of historical wounds in contemporary relationships, and the inheritance of both suffering and survival strategies. Lucille Clifton's poetry, which frequently moves between her own life and her ancestors' experiences, is exemplary. Students should engage with Marianne Hirsch's concept of "postmemory" alongside Black-specific theorisations. Related terms include enslavement memory, grief work, historical memory, countermemory, and survival poetics.
Also Known As
Transgenerational trauma Ancestral wounding Inherited pain
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