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

Small potatoes

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

Something trivial, insignificant, or of little importance; culinary metaphor describing potatoes as common staple, suggesting matter lacks substance, value, or consequence worth concern.

Detailed Definition
Small potatoes means something trivial, minor, or not worth much attention compared with larger matters. In poetry, the idiom’s earthy domestic image makes insignificance homely and concrete. It can be used in comic understatement, social critique, or reflections on scale. A poet may call a worry small potatoes to gain perspective, or use the phrase ironically when small things carry hidden emotional weight. It is useful for contrasting public importance with private feeling, where the minor may still matter deeply.
Example
Example in poetry:
A comic poem might say the lost ribbon is small potatoes compared with the missing bridegroom; In political verse, one scandal may be small potatoes beside a nation's hunger; The phrase means something minor or insignificant; A poet can use it to rank concerns.
Additional Notes
Small potatoes means something trivial, minor, or of little importance. Its earthy food image makes scale practical and domestic rather than abstract. In poetry, it can be used humorously to reduce grand complaints, or critically to show how powerful people dismiss others’ real concerns. Students should notice tone: what one speaker calls small potatoes may be another’s livelihood, pride, or grief. It pairs well with markets, kitchens, harvests, and class perspective.
Also Known As
insignificant
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