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

Pikuni

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

Pikuni is the Blackfoot (Piegan) people’s self-designation, central to Northern Plains traditions featuring rich oral narratives and cosmology.

Detailed Definition
Pikuni refers to the Piegan band of the Blackfoot Confederacy, with rich traditions of Napi stories, Sun Dance, and warrior ethos. As a tribal name, “Pikuni” in poetry evokes Plains spirituality, horse culture, and resistance. Poets reference Pikuni to honor Blackfoot resilience, the legacy of leaders like Crowfoot, and the enduring power of ceremonial life in the face of colonization.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pikuni, the Blackfoot name for themselves, appears in poetry as the heartbeat beneath buffalo-hide drums; A verse uses “Pikuni” to reclaim place names like “Sweetgrass Hills”; Contemporary poets invoke Pikuni oral history to counter textbook erasure; In lyrical form, Pikuni grandmothers braid sweetgrass into treaties that still breathe; Pikuni identity becomes a river in verse—flowing through Montana yet unbroken.
Additional Notes
Pikuni is one of the three divisions of the Blackfoot Confederacy (alongside Kainai and Siksika), and their mythology centers on Napi, the Sun Dance, and sacred bundles—poets should use “Pikuni” respectfully as a self-designation and recognize their distinct dialect and ceremonial practices within the larger Niitsitapi world, avoiding homogenization with other Plains tribes.
Also Known As
Blackfoot Piegan
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