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

Minotaur

Mythology
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

Mythical Cretan beast with the body of a man and head of a bull, imprisoned in the Labyrinth and slain by Theseus.

Detailed Definition
The Minotaur, born of Pasiphaë and a bull, was a monstrous hybrid imprisoned in the Cretan Labyrinth until slain by Theseus. It symbolizes primal instincts, the beast within civilization, and the necessity of confronting inner demons. In poetry, the Minotaur evokes fear, otherness, and the labyrinthine nature of the psyche.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Ovid’s "Metamorphoses," the Minotaur embodies monstrous hybridity in the labyrinth; In Dante’s "Inferno," the Minotaur guards the circle of violence; In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “On the Medusa,” the Minotaur echoes as primal horror; In W.H. Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror,” the Minotaur symbolizes inner beast; In modern poetry, the Minotaur often signifies psychological complexity; In Tracy K. Smith’s “Life on Mars,” the labyrinth becomes cosmic structure.
Additional Notes
Minotaur, half-man, half-bull imprisoned in the Labyrinth, symbolizes primal instinct, monstrosity within civilization, and the consequences of hubris (Pasiphaë’s curse); poets use him to explore the beast within, the maze of the psyche, or sacrificial violence—his defeat by Theseus represents order over chaos, yet modern poets often sympathize with his isolation.
Also Known As
Bull of Crete Labyrinth Dweller Asterion
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