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 M

Master narrative

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

A master narrative is a dominant cultural story that defines historical meaning, identity, or social truth while marginalising alternative perspectives.

Detailed Definition
African American poetry frequently challenges master narratives that justify slavery, segregation, racial hierarchy, national innocence, or simplistic historical memory. By exposing omissions, distortions, and ideological framing, poets create counter-histories rooted in lived Black experience. The term helps explain why many poems revisit official versions of patriotism, justice, civilisation, or progress, revealing how dominant stories often exclude or suppress African American voices and historical realities.
Example
Example in poetry:
A patriotic poem erasing Black suffering can represent master narrative; A poem challenging simplistic national myths critiques master narrative; Verse exposing omissions in official history demonstrates resistance to master narrative; A poem retelling history from excluded perspectives illustrates this concept; Poetry questioning dominant cultural stories reflects master narrative analysis
Additional Notes
The master narrative in the context of African American poetry refers to dominant white supremacist accounts of American history that position Black people as peripheral, inferior, or absent, and that have been institutionalised in education, media, and official culture. African American poets have consistently worked to identify, deconstruct, and replace master narratives with more truthful and complex accounts. Students should understand that challenging a master narrative is not simply adding Black content to an existing framework but questioning the framework itself. Related terms include counterstory, countermemory, revisionist history, and talking book. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Toni Morrison's critical essays (particularly "Playing in the Dark") provide essential theoretical context.
Also Known As
Dominant narrative Master story Hegemonic account
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