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 P

Parrhesia

Device
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

The rhetorical device of speaking truth boldly, often without reservation or fear

Detailed Definition
Parrhesia is a rhetorical and poetic stance characterized by bold, unfiltered, and often risky truth-telling, derived from ancient Greek democratic discourse where citizens spoke frankly despite potential consequences; in poetry, parrhesia manifests as a voice that confronts power, exposes hypocrisy, or articulates taboo subjects with moral urgency and personal vulnerability—seen in the works of poets like Audre Lorde or Mahmoud Darwish—where the speaker assumes ethical responsibility for their utterance, rejecting euphemism or decorum in favor of raw honesty that seeks to provoke change, bear witness, or reclaim agency through the courageous act of naming.
Example
Example in poetry:
Parrhesia: "I speak truth though it burns my tongue"; "King, you are wrong—and I will say it"; "No more lies—I name the rot within"; "Hear me, tyrant: your reign ends tonight"
Additional Notes
Bold, frank speech; speaking truth to power. Greek rhetorical term. Related to plain speech in poetry. Contrast with euphemism or circumlocution. Effective for political or testimonial verse requiring directness.
Other Meanings of “Parrhesia”
Also Known As
Frank speech Bold truth Fearless utterance Candid statement
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