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

Inverted villanelle

Form
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

Variation on villanelle form with altered refrain or structural pattern

Detailed Definition
Inverted villanelle: A variation of the traditional villanelle where the refrain pattern or structural elements are reversed or altered, maintaining the nineteen-line form while innovating on repetition patterns. Inverted villanelles demonstrate how fixed forms admit creative variation while retaining core structural features. This innovation shows poets working within and against tradition simultaneously, respecting formal frameworks while introducing meaningful change. Understanding inverted forms reveals tension between convention and innovation in formal poetry and how poets balance tradition's authority with individual creative vision through calculated variation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” inverts villanelle by making refrains evolve in meaning; Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle” uses traditional villanelle, but contemporary poets like A.E. Stallings invert it by varying refrains; Contemporary poet Terrance Hayes’ “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin” inverts villanelle structure into sonnet form; Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” inverts villanelle expectations through confessional tone; Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” uses palindromic structure as inverted villanelle; W.H. Auden’s “If I Could Tell You” inverts villanelle by questioning time’s passage.
Additional Notes
Inverted villanelle reverses the traditional villanelle pattern, placing refrains differently or altering the sequence. This variation maintains repetitive structure while creating fresh effects through reordered elements.
Also Known As
reverse villanelle inverted pastoral form backward villanelle Antivillanelle
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