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

side-by-side comparison

Device
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 rhetorical strategy placing two elements adjacent to highlight similarities or contrasts

Detailed Definition
Side-by-side comparison is a poetic technique that places two images, ideas, or characters in direct proximity to highlight similarity, contrast, or irony without explicit commentary; this visual and conceptual juxtaposition—such as describing a battlefield next to a nursery—relies on the reader to infer relationships, creating tension and depth through spatial contiguity rather than analytical exposition.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” uses side-by-side comparison to reject Petrarchan clichés; In Langston Hughes’s “Harlem,” “Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?” employs side-by-side comparison; In Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers— / That perches in the soul—” uses side-by-side comparison; In Sylvia Plath’s “Metaphors,” pregnancy is explored through side-by-side comparison (“I’m a riddle in nine syllables”).
Additional Notes
A side-by-side comparison places images, situations, or figures directly beside one another so readers perceive analogy or contrast. Juxtaposition may work without explicit comparison words, while simile openly signals relation with “like” or “as.” The device can sharpen irony, reveal social difference, or make an abstract idea concrete. Practical hint: pair details with a meaningful shared feature or tension; unrelated images merely placed together can feel arbitrary rather than illuminating.
Also Known As
Juxtaposed comparison Side-by-side simile Parallel likeness Collateral metaphor
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