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

Liberation theology

Black American
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

Liberation theology is a religious framework interpreting faith through struggles against oppression, injustice, and social inequality, often linking spirituality with political action.

Detailed Definition
In African American poetry, liberation theology appears where biblical language, prophetic justice, and spiritual faith are connected to racial freedom, dignity, and social transformation. Poets may reinterpret scripture through Black experience, presenting God as aligned with the oppressed rather than established power. The term helps explain poetry in which religious belief becomes not passive consolation but a source of moral resistance, communal strength, and political imagination.
Example
Example in poetry:
James Cone influenced liberation theology can inform poetic readings; A poem presenting God as aligned with the oppressed reflects liberation theology; Verse using Exodus imagery for racial justice demonstrates liberation theology; A poem treating prayer as resistance illustrates liberation theology; Poetry connecting scripture to social liberation reflects this framework
Additional Notes
Liberation theology in poetry draws primarily on the Black liberation theology developed by James H. Cone in works like "A Black Theology of Liberation" (1970), which argued that the Christian God takes the side of the oppressed and that Black suffering is central, not peripheral, to Christian meaning. Poets like Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikky Finney draw on liberation theology's insistence that faith must be politically consequential. Students should understand liberation theology as a critical response to the complicity of mainstream Christianity with racial oppression. Related terms include homiletic poetics, sacred secular fusion, preacherly cadence, and redemption song. The Exodus narrative — God liberating an enslaved people — is the central scriptural touchstone.
Also Known As
Black liberation theology Exodus theology Prophetic Black faith
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