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

Issue-Peas

Archaic Terms
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

“Issue-peas” were small pea-shaped pellets placed in an artificial or chronic draining sore, called an issue, to keep it open for medical treatment.

Detailed Definition
In early modern medicine, an issue was a deliberately made opening in the skin, or a persistent ulcer, believed to draw harmful bodily fluids away from the body. An issue-pea—often a small pellet of wax, wood, or similar material—was inserted into the wound so that it would not heal closed. In Jonathan Swift’s poem, the phrase is part of the grotesque inventory of Corinna’s bodily ailments and medical props: a pigeon steals the pellets from her sores, intensifying the poem’s comic disgust.
Example
Example in poetry:
In A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed, Swift writes: “A Pigeon pick’d her Issue-Peas; And Shock her Tresses fill’d with Fleas.” Here, “issue-peas” refers not to edible peas but to the small pellets used to keep Corinna’s “issues,” or draining sores, open. The image is deliberately degrading: even a pigeon treats her medical dressings as something to peck at.
Additional Notes
Historical context: Issues were part of older medical practices based partly on humoral theory, which held that illness could result from harmful or excessive bodily fluids. Keeping a wound draining was thought to remove these substances. Not literal peas: Although they could resemble peas in size and shape, issue-peas were medical inserts or pellets, not vegetables. Related terms: An issue could mean a draining sore, an artificial ulcer, or the discharge from such a wound. A seton was a related treatment in which a thread or strip of material was passed through the skin to maintain drainage. Poetic effect: Swift uses the archaic medical term for satirical realism. Its technical specificity makes Corinna’s supposed beauty collapse into an inventory of artificial cosmetics, prostheses, wounds, and remedies.
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