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

Rough and ready

Idiomatic Phrase
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

Crude or unpolished in appearance but functional and effective; describes something lacking refinement or finish yet possessing practical utility, reliability, or rugged competence.

Detailed Definition
Rough and ready means practical, functional, energetic, and effective despite lacking polish, refinement, or elegance. In poetry, the idiom can describe speech, tools, shelters, songs, people, or improvised solutions. It values usefulness over perfection and may suit working-class voices, frontier scenes, folk traditions, or emergency action. A poet may use it admiringly for vitality and honesty, or critically when crudeness causes harm. It is useful for contrasting crafted beauty with raw adequacy and practical survival.
Example
Example in poetry:
A frontier poem might praise a rough and ready shelter built before the storm arrives; In a folk song, rough and ready rhymes can carry more truth than polished flattery; The phrase means practical but not refined; A poet can use it for plain strength and immediacy.
Additional Notes
Rough and ready means simple, unpolished, but practical and effective. In poetry, it can describe tools, shelters, manners, verse forms, frontier life, or improvised solutions. The idiom values utility over elegance, making it useful in poems about labour, survival, and craft. Students should ask whether roughness is a flaw or a source of honesty. It pairs well with wood, rope, patched clothes, plain speech, and working hands.
Also Known As
basic
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