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

Metrical variation

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

A deliberate break from a poem’s established meter, used for emphasis, surprise, or expressive variation.

Detailed Definition
Metrical variation introduces deliberate deviations from a poem’s established meter to reflect emotional shifts, natural speech, or thematic disruption; essential to expressive versification, it prevents rigidity and deepens the interplay between form and content.
Example
Example in poetry:
The use of an extra, unaccented syllable at the end of an iambic line (feminine ending); A sudden shift from iambic to trochaic meter for a single line or stanza to indicate a change in tone or pace; Incorporating a spondee (DUM-DUM) in a line of otherwise iambic verse for emphasis: 'The HEART, THE BRAIN is all I have to keep.'; Varying the length of the line, such as shifting from pentameter to trimeter, while keeping the same basic foot (e.g., iambic).

Emily Dickinson’s slant rhymes (“room”/“storm”) exemplify metric deviation; Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” deviates from nursery rhyme meter for trauma; Contemporary poet Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” uses prose blocks as metric deviation; Walt Whitman’s cataloging deviates from classical meter; T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” uses fragmented meters as deviation; Ocean Vuong’s “Time Is a Mother” deviates through prose-lyric hybridity.
Additional Notes
Any change or departure from the established metrical pattern within a poem, such as substituting a different foot or varying the position of the caesura; prevents the rhythm from becoming too predictable.

Metric deviation substitutes or omits expected feet for expressive effect. Related to prosodic replacement and metric deviation. Scan carefully—deviations should highlight key words or emotions without destabilizing the base rhythm entirely.
Also Known As
Rhythmic variation metrical change variant meter Foot substitution Metric deviation Rhythmic substitution Substituted rhythm Rhythm deviation Altered meter
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