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

Space Age

Historical And Literary Periods
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

The period beginning in 1957 with the Soviet launch of Sputnik, characterized by space exploration, space race competition, and new visions of human possibility. Profoundly influenced imagination and culture.

Detailed Definition
The Space Age inspired poetry celebrating human achievement in space and exploring cosmic possibilities. Poets engaged with space exploration and space age ideology. This era appears in poetry through celebration of technological achievement and space exploration, cosmic imagery and perspective, exploration of new frontiers and possibility, Cold War competition and ideology, futuristic vision, and establishment of space age poetry as crucial to understanding postwar technological optimism and cosmic consciousness.
Example
Example in poetry:
Space Age poetry, emerging from the 1950s onward, deals with themes of technological wonder, cosmic loneliness, the Cold War space race, and the changing perception of humanity’s place in the universe; A poet could use astronomical terminology—exoplanets, zero-g, nebula—to create a sense of vastness and exploration, characteristic of the Space Age; W.H. Auden’s poem "The Shield of Achilles" and related works reflect the anxiety and new geopolitical stakes introduced by the weapons and technology of the early Space Age; The poem might contrast the perfect, inhuman logic of space exploration with the messy, earthbound emotions of the astronauts' families, a classic Space Age dichotomy; A poet could employ highly visual, almost cinematic language to describe the Earth as seen from orbit, evoking the 'Overview Effect,' a psychological shift often associated with the Space Age; The imagery of a 'giant leap' or 'reaching for the stars' can be subverted to explore the ultimate futility or expense of such ambitions, a common reflection in later Space Age poetry.
Additional Notes
The Space Age (1950s–1970s) introduced poetry infused with awe, science, and existential reflection on humanity’s place in the cosmos. Poets like James Merrill and Adrienne Rich used space imagery to explore transcendence, technology, and isolation. Space Age poetry often blended metaphysical wonder with political unease during the Cold War, reflecting both optimism for progress and anxiety about nuclear annihilation.
Also Known As
Space Age Period Space Era Atomic-Space Age
Skip to main content