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

lettered litany

Form
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

A poetic list or series in which each item begins with successive letters of the alphabet

Detailed Definition
A lettered litany is a repetitive, incantatory poem structured around the alphabet, where each line or stanza invokes a letter in sequence to enumerate virtues, sorrows, or petitions; rooted in religious and didactic traditions, it blends prayerful rhythm with alphabetical order to create a meditative or mnemonic form that accumulates emotional or spiritual weight through accumulation.
Example
Example in poetry:
lettered litany: "A for the ache that never fades, / B for the breath you left behind, / C for the chair that waits in silence..."; "D for the door you never closed, / E for the echo of your name, / F for the flowers left to fade..."; Continues through the alphabet as a prayer or lament; Litany of losses, each introduced by a letter; Modeled on medieval penitential litanies but secularized; "X for the exit you took too soon, / Y for the years I count alone, / Z for the zero you left in my heart."
Additional Notes
lettered litany is a poetic form using repetitive, alphabetic, or catalogic structures akin to religious litanies, often for incantatory or mnemonic effect; students should note how repetition and enumeration create rhythm, emphasize communal or personal supplication, and build emotional intensity—this form bridges prayer and poetry, as in medieval devotional verse.
Also Known As
alphabetical litany lettered invocation devotional abecedary sacred ABC recitation Abecedarium Alphabet hymn lettered prayer poem
Skip to main content