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.

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

Poetic persona

Concept
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 speaker or voice adopted by the poet in a poem, distinct from the author’s real identity

Detailed Definition
Poetic persona is the constructed voice or mask through which a poem speaks, distinct from the author’s biographical self; it allows exploration of diverse perspectives, historical moments, or emotional states while maintaining artistic distance and dramatic credibility.
Example
Example in poetry:
Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” adopts a poetic persona of a resurrected performer; Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” uses the Duke as poetic persona; T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock is a poetic persona of modern anxiety; Emily Dickinson’s frequent use of “I” constructs a reclusive poetic persona.
Additional Notes
Poetic persona is a constructed speaker distinct from the poet—e.g., Prufrock, the Duke in “My Last Duchess”; allows exploration of perspectives; analyze voice, diction, and reliability to understand dramatic irony or critique.
Also Known As
Lyric speaker Poetic voice Persona mask Narrative I First-person speaker Poetic I
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