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 N

Non-counted syllable

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 syllable excluded from the regular metrical count, often due to elision, syncopation, or prosodic convention in poetic meter.

Detailed Definition
Non-counted syllable is a syllable that falls outside the regular metrical count of a line—such as an extra unstressed syllable in iambic pentameter (feminine ending)—and is tolerated or exploited for rhythmic flexibility; poets use non-counted syllables to mimic natural speech, delay resolution, or create lyrical overflow, as in Shakespeare’s frequent eleven-syllable lines that soften closure and sustain momentum.
Example
Example in poetry:
Non-counted syllable appears in free or accentual verse where syllable count isn’t fixed: Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” uses stress-based rhythm; contemporary examples include W.S. Merwin’s unpunctuated lines; Louise Glück’s “Mock Orange” varies syllables for emotional effect; Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” follows breath, not count; Old English alliterative verse (e.g., “Beowulf”) uses strong stresses, not syllables.
Additional Notes
Non-counted syllable is ignored in metrical scansion (e.g., elided or silent). Contrast with untruncated lines. Common in rapid speech or song—read aloud to hear where syllables compress naturally without breaking rhythm.
Also Known As
Supplementary syllable Out-of-count unit Extra meter syllable Overstep stress Extrametrical
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