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



Shifting break

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

A variable or irregular line break that changes position for expressive effect

Detailed Definition
Shifting break is a variable or unpredictable line or stanza break that changes position for expressive effect—moving from end-of-clause to mid-word across stanzas—to create tension, surprise, or mimic thought processes; common in William Carlos Williams and contemporary free verse, it challenges syntactic expectation and emphasizes fragmentation or fluidity.
Example
Example in poetry:
A line ending mid-phrase like "I never thought—" followed by a stanza break before "—it would end like this"; In William Carlos Williams’ "The Red Wheelbarrow," breaks after "so much depends / upon" shift emphasis unexpectedly; A poem where the break moves from end-of-clause to mid-word across stanzas; A verse that breaks after "She said" in one stanza and after "She" in the next for rhythmic variation; A poem using enjambment inconsistently: sometimes breaking after verbs, sometimes after prepositions, to create tension
Additional Notes
Shifting break varies line or stanza breaks unpredictably to create tension, surprise, or mimic thought; seen in Williams’ enjambment or contemporary free verse; students should track how breaks affect pacing and emphasis—e.g., mid-word cuts signal rupture; linked to "visual break" and "asymmetrical verse."
Also Known As
variable caesura mobile pause dynamic line division Caesura movement shifting pause wandering caesura
Skip to main content