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

Plain style

Style
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 literary style characterized by direct, clear, and unadorned language that avoids elaborate ornamentation; emphasizes clarity and accessibility over rhetorical flourish or complex figurative language.

Detailed Definition
Plain style values honesty and accessibility over ornament. Poets use it to emphasise sincerity and moral clarity.
Example
Example in poetry:
George Herbert’s “Love (III)” uses plain, conversational exchanges—“Love bade me welcome”—to make theological struggle immediate and human; Robert Frost’s “The Pasture” opens with direct invitation, “I’m going out to clean the pasture spring,” demonstrating clarity without shallowness; William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say” turns ordinary speech and short lines into a poised, memorable lyric; A plain-style elegy may say, “My father is dead. The kettle still boils,” trusting concrete fact rather than ornate consolation; Plain style does not mean artless writing: its restrained diction, syntax, and detail can intensify moral seriousness
Additional Notes
Plain style values clarity and moral seriousness through unadorned language, often associated with devotional or ethical writing, but adaptable to any subject. Students should notice how power comes from restraint: simple diction, direct syntax, and carefully chosen concrete details can carry intense feeling without flourish. It is a useful corrective to the assumption that “poetic” means ornate. In writing, remove rhetorical decoration, favour strong verbs, and let the line break create emphasis rather than metaphorical fireworks. A strong exercise is to describe a profound experience (grief, awe) with the simplest possible words while keeping precision and tonal integrity.
Also Known As
Plain Speech Style Plainstyle Simple Style
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