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 O

oakum

Archaic Terms
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

Loose, tarred hemp or jute fibers used historically for caulking ships’ seams; symbolizes maritime labor and hardship in poetry.

Detailed Definition
Oakum refers to the coarse, tarred fibers of old rope, typically hemp or jute, that were picked apart by hand—a tedious and often penal labor—and used to seal the seams between planks on wooden ships to make them watertight. The term appears in 18th- and 19th-century literature and poetry as a metonym for grueling manual work, particularly in naval or prison contexts, where convicts were frequently set to “picking oakum.” In poetic usage, oakum evokes themes of toil, isolation, and the harsh realities of seafaring life, serving as a concrete detail that grounds verse in historical materiality. Its inclusion lends authenticity to maritime narratives and underscores socio-economic conditions of the era, especially in works addressing class, punishment, or imperial expansion tied to naval power.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Charles Reade’s novel It Is Never Too Late to Mend, a convict laments, “I’ve picked oakum till my fingers bled”—a line often quoted in Victorian poetry to evoke penal suffering; The poet John Masefield, though writing in the 20th century, used “oakum” in maritime verse to recall the tarred fibers that “stitched the sea into the ship’s bones”; In an anonymous 18th-century ballad, a sailor sings, “No gold I seek, nor silken gown—just oakum for my seams and rum for my frown,” linking the material to nautical realism; A modern student poem might read: “She unraveled rope like memory, strand by strand, picking oakum from the past to seal the cracks of time”; In prison reform poetry of the 1840s, “oakum-picking” became symbolic of dehumanizing labor, as in: “Ten thousand strands, ten thousand sighs—the oakum grows while hope belies”; Though rare in lyric poetry, “oakum” appears in dramatic monologues set in dockyards, such as: “My hands reek of tar and oakum, yet my heart still beats for Bristol’s tide.”
Additional Notes
Though “oakum” is not a poetic term in the traditional sense—like metaphor or caesura—it functions as a potent lexical artifact that grounds poetry in historical materiality, especially in maritime, labor, or penal contexts. Derived from the Old English “ācumba” (literally “off-combings”), oakum was produced by unraveling old ropes, a task commonly assigned to prisoners in 18th- and 19th-century Britain; this association imbues the word with connotations of drudgery, punishment, and social marginalization. Poets referencing oakum often do so to evoke authenticity in seafaring narratives or to critique institutional cruelty. Related terms include “caulking,” “tarring,” and “naval stores,” which may appear alongside oakum in nautical verse. When used in contemporary poetry, “oakum” can serve as a deliberate archaism that signals historical consciousness or thematic depth. Students should note that while rare in lyric poetry, it appears more frequently in dramatic monologues, ballads, and socially engaged verse. Its tactile, olfactory specificity—tarred, fibrous, coarse—makes it a vivid sensory detail for ekphrastic or realist poetic strategies.
Also Known As
picked oakum tarred oakum junk
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