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 L

Leaning emphasis

Meter
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

Stress that inclines toward or depends on neighboring syllables, rather than standing independently; it creates fluid rhythm, where emphasis shifts depending on context, adding subtlety to metrical reading.

Detailed Definition
A metrical stress or accent that inclines toward, depends on, or gains force from adjacent syllables or metrical context. The leaning emphasis receives strength through its relationship to neighboring unstressed syllables or established pattern rather than through natural linguistic stress. This concept helps explain how metrical patterns create stresses that differ from normal speech and how context shapes prosodic emphasis.
Example
Example in poetry:
Emily Dickinson’s dashes create leaning emphasis on final words: “I could not see to see—”; Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” uses enjambment for leaning emphasis: “I think I may well be a Jew”; Contemporary poet Ocean Vuong’s line breaks lean into vulnerability: “Don’t be afraid”; Robert Frost’s “Birches” uses leaning emphasis: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches”; W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” leans into “the disaster” through delayed syntax; Lucille Clifton’s short lines create leaning emphasis on “hips,” “celebrate,” “me.”
Additional Notes
Metrical term explaining stress placement. Important for scansion and understanding how meter works. Related to prosodic analysis.
Also Known As
Inclined stress Context-dependent accent Attached emphasis Adjacent-syllable stress Enclitic stress
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