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

Potosi

Historical Location
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 silver-rich mountain city in Bolivia, famed in the 16th–17th centuries as a symbol of New World wealth and colonial exploitation

Detailed Definition
Potosí, located in present-day Bolivia, became legendary after the Spanish discovered vast silver deposits at Cerro Rico in 1545. It quickly grew into one of the world’s largest and wealthiest cities, fueling European economies while exacting a horrific human cost through forced indigenous labor. In poetry, Potosí often symbolizes the paradox of opulence and suffering, the moral ambiguities of empire, or the fleeting nature of material riches—appearing in works that critique colonialism or meditate on the transience of earthly glory.
Example
Example in poetry:
Spanish colonial poetry celebrates Potosí’s silver mountain as a symbol of New World wealth; Quechua oral poetry laments Potosí as a site of forced labor and extraction; Baroque poets like Sor Juana reference Potosí to critique materialism; Romantic travelers depict Potosí as a sublime yet tragic monument to greed; Contemporary Andean poets reclaim Potosí as a symbol of indigenous resilience.
Additional Notes
Potosí, in Bolivia, became legendary in the 16th–17th centuries after vast silver deposits were discovered at Cerro Rico (“Rich Mountain”). It fueled the Spanish Empire but at horrific human cost (mita labor system). In European poetry, Potosí symbolized New World wealth, colonial exploitation, and the moral corruption of greed. Quechua and modern Latin American poets reclaim it as a site of indigenous suffering and resistance—essential for postcolonial readings of place.
Also Known As
Potosí
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