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

ironic pastoral

Genre
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

Pastoral poetry employing irony to subvert or question conventional pastoral idealizations

Detailed Definition
An ironic pastoral employs pastoral conventions while simultaneously undermining or questioning them through tonal distance, satirical treatment, or exposure of the gap between pastoral idealization and reality. This mode maintains the superficial features of pastoral poetry—rural settings, shepherd figures, natural imagery—while treating them skeptically or satirically. Ironic pastorals create meaning through the tension between form and attitude, using conventional materials to critique the very conventions they invoke, thereby revealing the constructedness of pastoral idealization and its potential complicity with problematic social arrangements.
Example
Example in poetry:
Alexander Pope’s “Windsor Forest” uses ironic pastoral to critique politics; Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd” is answered by Sir Walter Raleigh’s ironic pastoral “The Nymph’s Reply”; Contemporary poet A.E. Stallings uses ironic pastoral in “Hapax Legomenon” to contrast myth and modernity; W.H. Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone” uses ironic pastoral to question idyllic retreat; Sylvia Plath’s “Sheep in Fog” uses ironic pastoral to depict despair; Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City” uses ironic pastoral by juxtaposing Saigon fall with natural imagery.
Additional Notes
Ironic pastoral uses rural settings or shepherd motifs to critique idealization—employs sarcasm, contrast, or disillusionment to undermine pastoral conventions.
Also Known As
Satirical pastoral Mock-idyll Ironic bucolic Parodic rural verse Counter-pastoral
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