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.

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

Shoshone

Mythology
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 Great Basin Native American tribe whose mythology features Coyote as a trickster-creator and includes solar cosmology.

Detailed Definition
The Shoshone people maintain myths featuring Coyote as a trickster and creator, and reverence for the sun and mountains. As a tribal name, “Shoshone” in poetry evokes desert spirituality, horse culture, and the legacy of leaders like Washakie. Poets reference Shoshone to honor Great Basin resilience, the sacredness of arid landscapes, and the survival of indigenous knowledge in extreme environments.
Example
Example in poetry:
Shoshone, referencing the Great Basin people, appears in poetry as the sagebrush whisperer of high desert survival; A verse uses “Shoshone” to honor rabbit-skin blanket weaving as thermal science; Contemporary poets invoke Shoshone star lore for night navigation; In lyrical form, Shoshone elders read snow tracks like prophecy; Shoshone identity becomes a bitterroot bloom in verse—rare, resilient, and sustaining.
Additional Notes
Shoshone (Newe) cosmology includes Coyote as a trickster-transformer, the sacred Goshute salt flats, and stories of survival in the Great Basin desert; their oral tradition is deeply tied to seasonal migration and plant knowledge—poets should distinguish between Eastern, Western, and Northern Shoshone variations and honor figures like Sacagawea not just as historical but as part of a living cultural continuum.
Also Known As
Shoshoni Snake People
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