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 S

Sell like hot cakes

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

To sell very quickly and in large quantities; culinary metaphor describing hot cakes' immediate appeal and rapid consumption, indicating high demand and commercial success.

Detailed Definition
Sell like hot cakes means to be extremely popular and sell quickly. In poetry, the idiom can appear in satire, market scenes, publishing contexts, consumer culture, or comic commentary on public taste. The hot-cake image suggests freshness, appetite, and rapid demand, but it may also reduce art, beauty, or belief to commodity. A poet may use it ironically when something shallow becomes fashionable. The phrase is useful for examining popularity, value, and the uneasy relationship between culture and commerce.
Example
Example in poetry:
A comic poem might say the baker's moon-shaped buns sold like hot cakes at the fair; In satire, rumours sell like hot cakes when truth is too plain; The phrase means to sell very quickly; A poet can use it for lively marketplace imagery.
Additional Notes
Sell like hot cakes means sell very quickly and successfully. The idiom is commercial, cheerful, and domestic, evoking fresh desirable goods. In poetry, it can satirise popularity, consumer culture, literary markets, fashion, or the commodification of art. Students should ask whether rapid sale proves value or merely appetite. The phrase pairs well with stalls, ovens, crowds, coins, and the difference between nourishment and demand.
Also Known As
sell quickly
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