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 R

rising action

Structure
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 section of a poem where tension, complexity, or intensity increases.

Detailed Definition
The building tension, developing conflict, and escalating stakes in narrative poems before reaching climax or turning point. Borrowed from dramatic structure's division into exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. In narrative poetry, rising action involves complicating initial situation, introducing obstacles, raising questions, and increasing urgency or danger. Essential in ballads, epic poetry, and narrative verse generally. Creates anticipation and momentum carrying readers toward crucial confrontation, revelation, or transformation. Effective rising action requires controlling pacing, strategically withholding information, and steadily increasing dramatic pressure.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “Romeo and Juliet,” rising action builds from meeting to balcony scene to secret marriage before tragedy; In “Beowulf,” rising action escalates from Grendel’s attacks to Grendel’s mother’s revenge; In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” rising action moves from invitation (“Let us go”) to existential paralysis; In “Citizen,” Rankine’s rising action accumulates microaggressions toward explosive realization; Student poem: tension builds from “She smiled” to “She left” to “The door locked.”
Additional Notes
The building tension and developing action in narrative poems before climax. Borrowed from dramatic structure. Conflict develops, stakes increase, complications arise. Essential in ballads and narrative verse. Creates anticipation and momentum toward turning point or climax.
Also Known As
dramatic escalation narrative build tension development climactic progression Complication Epitasis
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