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

Somme

Battles
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 devastating 1916 WWI offensive with over a million casualties, emblematic of trench warfare’s horror.

Detailed Definition
The Somme shattered illusions of quick victory and inspired a generation of war poets like Sassoon and Owen. In poetry, it represents industrialized slaughter, lost youth, and the collapse of romanticized war, becoming a byword for senseless sacrifice.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Battle of the Somme appears in Wilfred Owen’s and Siegfried Sassoon’s anti-war poetry, such as Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” which laments “the monstrous anger of the guns”; poets use the Somme to symbolize industrialized slaughter and lost innocence; modern verse often contrasts the battle’s first day (19,000 British dead) with official optimism; the Somme appears in poetry as a landscape of mud, wire, and memory; educational poems use the Somme to teach about WWI trench warfare and poetic innovation; some contemporary poets visit the Somme to connect past trauma with present peace.
Additional Notes
The Somme (1916) was one of WWI’s bloodiest battles, with 19,000 British soldiers killed on the first day alone. It catalyzed a revolution in war poetry—Sassoon’s satire and Owen’s visceral imagery reject earlier glorification. Students should analyze how the Somme’s industrial slaughter demanded new poetic techniques: pararhyme, fragmented syntax, and ironic diction. The battle’s landscape (craters, mud, wire) becomes a recurring symbol of trauma. Crucial for understanding modernist responses to mechanized death and the collapse of heroic narrative.
Also Known As
Battle of the Somme The Somme Offensive Somme 1916
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