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

Memory

Psychology
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

Memory: The psychological faculty of retaining, storing, and recalling past experiences, a cornerstone of poetry, shaping identity, nostalgia, and the layering of time.

Explore this topic in depth (1)

Time and Memory in Poetry — Poems do not merely describe the past or measure passing hours: they shape time on the page and in the ear. This guide offers practical ways to recognise memory, recurrence, delay and the pressure of the present as you read and listen.

Detailed Definition
Memory in poetry structures narratives, triggers emotion, and bridges time. Poets use flashbacks, repetitive returns, and sensory details—smells, sounds—to evoke recollection. Memory can be unreliable, selective, or redemptive, as in odes to childhood or elegies. It connects personal history to collective trauma or nostalgia. Poets explore how memory shapes identity, and how its gaps invite imagination, making it a cornerstone of confessional and historical verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
Memory in William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" where memory shapes identity; In Marcel Proust's influence on poetry, memory is a central theme; In Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art," memory is tied to loss; In W.H. Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats," memory is elegiac; In contemporary poetry, memory is often unreliable and fragmented; In "The Waste Land," memory is a source of both pain and meaning.
Additional Notes
Memory in poetry structures narratives, triggers emotion, and bridges time through flashbacks, repetitive returns, and sensory details—smells, sounds—that evoke recollection. In teaching, distinguish memory from nostalgia: memory is recall of past experiences, while nostalgia is wistful longing for the past. Memory can be unreliable, selective, or redemptive, connecting personal history to collective trauma. Poets explore how memory shapes identity and how its gaps invite imagination. Students should examine how poets use sensory detail, anaphora, and temporal shifts to convey memory's fragmentary yet powerful hold.
Also Known As
Recollection remembrance recall reflection reminiscence Mnemosyne
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