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 K

Keep one's cool

Idiomatic Phrase
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

To maintain calmness, composure, and rational self-control even under intense stress, provocation, or pressure; it contrasts with losing one's temper, highlighting emotional discipline and the ability to think clearly when others might panic.

Detailed Definition
"Keep one's cool" values emotional equanimity, self-control, and composed rationality in the face of provocation, stress, or danger, making it a central idiom for stoic, heroic, and psychological poetry that prizes inner stability over reactive passion. Its contrast with "losing one's cool" establishes a binary that poets exploit to dramatize moments of testing, where a character's ability to maintain calm determines their fate or moral standing. In dramatic monologues, the speaker often reflects on a time they kept their cool, recounting the benefits of restraint. Narrative poems may use the loss of cool as a turning point toward disaster, while the preservation of it allows for clever solutions. The phrase's physical metaphor—cool as a temperature, implying lowered emotional heat—connects to somatic imagery, allowing poets to describe bodily sensations of tension and release. Its colloquial register grounds abstract philosophical discussions of virtue in everyday experience, making it accessible. Moreover, its imperative form ("keep your cool") appears in direct address, creating immediacy and urgency.
Example
Example in poetry:
“In debate, poets keep their cool to sharpen wit” means they remain calm under pressure; “The crowd booed, but she kept her cool and finished the poem” shows self-command in performance; In a tense dramatic monologue, “Keep your cool, said the mother, while sirens climbed the hill” creates contrast between advice and danger; The idiom’s casual tone can make emotional restraint feel immediate rather than abstract
Additional Notes
"Keep one's cool" maintains composure. Usage tip: Pressure response. Related: "lose one's head." Teaches control.
Also Known As
stay calm remain composed keep your temper stay cool keep cool maintain composure
Skip to main content