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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

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.

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

Separate the wheat from the chaff

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 distinguish the valuable or essential from the worthless or trivial; to identify quality among a mixture of good and inferior elements.

Detailed Definition
From the agricultural process of threshing and winnowing, where grain is separated from its inedible husk, this biblical idiom connects discernment to the fundamental work of cultivation and harvest. In poetry, it appears in works about criticism, spiritual discernment, and the editorial labor of deciding what deserves to survive. Poets invoke it to celebrate judgment, the capacity to recognize genuine value, and the necessary work of separating what nourishes from what merely occupies space. Its agricultural roots connect to a tradition of pastoral poetry where farming provides the vocabulary for moral and intellectual life. The phrase also raises the question of who does the separating—who decides what is wheat and what is chaff—making it productive for political verse interrogating the authority of the judge.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about literary criticism might use separate the wheat from the chaff to describe the editorial work of deciding what deserves to survive — the judgment that is both necessary and dangerous, given that the judge's criteria determine the outcome; In a biblical poem or a poem engaging with the pastoral tradition, the literal process of threshing and winnowing becomes a meditation on discernment — the physical work of separation that carries moral and theological weight; A poem about cultural memory might use separate the wheat from the chaff to describe the work of archivists, anthologists, and teachers — the people who decide what the culture will remember and what it will allow to blow away; In a satirical poem about aesthetic gatekeeping, separate the wheat from the chaff is examined critically — who appointed the separator, what grain serves as their standard, and who decided that their criteria were the right ones; A poem about aging and the selection of what to carry from a long life might use the idiom to describe the work of retrospective editing — the wheat of essential experience kept, the chaff of the unnecessary finally released; The agricultural origin of the phrase connects it to the pastoral tradition in poetry, where farming provides the vocabulary for moral and intellectual life — the patient, physical work of cultivation and harvest as a figure for the patient, physical work of making something that will endure
Additional Notes
This biblical and agricultural phrase means separating value from waste. In poetry, it suits judgement, editing, moral testing, education, and spiritual discernment. The threshing-floor imagery is rich: grain, husks, wind, labour, harvest, and nourishment. It can also describe reading poetry itself, where students learn to distinguish central meaning from decorative excess.
Also Known As
Sort the wheat from the chaff Separate good from bad
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