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 R

Reductio ad absurdum

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

A logical technique, sometimes used poetically, that refutes an idea by extending it to an absurd conclusion

Detailed Definition
Reductio ad absurdum in poetry is a rhetorical strategy that refutes an idea by showing it leads to ridiculous or impossible conclusions; poets employ this technique satirically or philosophically, constructing scenarios where logical premises collapse into chaos, thereby undermining dogma, exposing hypocrisy, or illustrating the limits of rational thought through dramatic, often humorous, exaggeration.
Example
Example in poetry:
Reductio ad absurdum: "You claim money brings happiness— / Yet kings drown in gold and beg for joy"; "If perfection is required, no poem could exist— / But poems do, so perfection is not required"; "You say truth needs no defense— / Then why guard it with laws and swords?"; "If silence is golden, then all poets are paupers— / But their words buy kingdoms, so silence is not gold"; "Assume all grief must end— / Yet the ocean still mourns the moon."
Additional Notes
Reductio ad absurdum, a logical method of disproving a proposition by showing it leads to absurdity, appears in poetry as satirical exaggeration or ironic scenario; students should identify how poets use this to critique social norms, political rhetoric, or philosophical positions—Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is a prose example that informs poetic irony.
Other Meanings of “Reductio ad absurdum”
Also Known As
logical absurdity reductive argument ironic disproof philosophical paradox Absurdity proof Reductio argument ab absurdo
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