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

Phantom

Folklore
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

Generic term for ghosts or apparitions, especially in haunted house lore

Detailed Definition
Phantoms represent unresolved pasts and spectral presence. In poetry, they embody memory, guilt, and the persistence of history, often used in gothic or elegiac contexts.
Example
Example in poetry:
The phantom appears in elegiac poetry as a symbol of unresolved grief: "Your phantom walks the hall at dusk—still wearing last year’s coat"; Poets use phantoms to explore memory’s persistence: "Not ghost, but echo—phantom of your laugh in empty rooms"; In gothic verse, phantoms blur reality and illusion: "Is it you, or just the wind? The phantom wears your face tonight"; Modern poets employ the phantom as metaphor for trauma: "War left a phantom limb—aches where my brother used to stand"; In love poetry, the phantom represents lost intimacy: "I reach for you in sleep—phantom warmth where you once lay"
Additional Notes
Phantom: A spectral or ghostly apparition appearing in global folklore, often tied to unresolved trauma, unfinished business, or liminal thresholds (e.g., crossroads, mirrors, doorways). In poetry, phantoms serve as metaphors for memory, guilt, historical haunting, or the persistence of the past; they differ from generic ghosts by their emotional or symbolic weight—think of the Phantom of the Opera as a literary extension. Useful in elegiac, gothic, or postcolonial verse where ancestral echoes shape identity; avoid reducing them to mere horror tropes—consider their role as witnesses or messengers.
Other Meanings of “Phantom”
Also Known As
Ghost Apparition Specter taidhbhse ghaist Eidolon
Skip to main content