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

Prosthesis

Technique
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 addition of an unaccented syllable at the beginning of a word or line for metrical purposes.

Detailed Definition
Prosthesis inserts extra sounds, like "a-" in "alone," to smooth meter or euphony; common in classical Greek and English verse, it appears to resolve scansion issues, enhance flow, and adapt borrowed words, preserving poetic rhythm without altering core meaning.
Example
Example in poetry:
Adding "a-" prefix to "wake" creating "awake" represents prosthetic syllable for metrical adjustment; Greek and Latin poets used prosthesis to maintain meter without sacrificing word meaning; Prosthesis allows flexible syllable count to meet formal requirements of line; The technique appears more in languages with flexible word formation than in English; Understanding prosthesis helps readers appreciate how poets balance sonic and semantic demands; Historical poets freely added prosthetic syllables that modern English has since dropped
Additional Notes
Prosthesis designates the metrical addition of an unaccented syllable at a word or line's beginning to satisfy rhythmic requirements without altering the word's essential identity. This technical device allows poets working in strict meters to incorporate words that would otherwise violate metrical patterns. In classical prosody and accentual-syllabic verse, prosthesis provides flexibility when natural word stress patterns conflict with metrical schemes. The added syllable typically consists of unstressed articles, prepositions, or particles (a-, be-, y-). Understanding prosthesis helps students recognize that metrical regularity sometimes requires subtle adjustments that skilled poets execute invisibly. The technique differs from true metrical substitution because the added syllable doesn't fundamentally change the line's rhythmic character. While contemporary free verse rarely employs prosthesis consciously, understanding the concept reveals how poets navigate between natural speech rhythms and formal metrical requirements. Students analyzing formal poetry should note where prosthetic syllables appear and how they maintain metrical integrity without creating awkwardness. The technique demonstrates that formal poetry involves negotiation between abstract patterns and linguistic materiality.
Also Known As
Prothesis
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