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

Sporadic

Disease
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

“Sporadic” describes disease occurring in scattered, irregular, or isolated cases rather than as a continuous outbreak. It suggests uncertainty, recurrence, and an unpredictable threat.

Detailed Definition
In medical use, sporadic describes cases of illness that arise irregularly and separately, without the sustained pattern of an epidemic or endemic condition. A sporadic fever, death, or outbreak can make a community uneasy because danger appears without a stable rhythm or obvious source. In poetry, the word can describe literal disease while also suggesting isolated flashes of violence, memory, sorrow, or fear. Its usefulness lies in the tension between apparent calm and sudden return: what seems absent may reappear unexpectedly.
Example
Example in poetry:
Sporadic raindrops falling on the dusty road (William Wordsworth, "An Evening Walk"); A sporadic gunfire echoing through the valley (Walt Whitman, "Drum-Taps"); Sporadic lights gleaming from distant cottage windows (Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"); Sporadic visits of joy to a heavy heart (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Dejection: An Ode"); Sporadic trees dotting the barren plain (Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage")
Additional Notes
"Sporadic" describes events or outbreaks occurring at scattered, irregular intervals without a continuous pattern. In poetry, sporadic rhythm or imagery conveys unpredictability, fragmentation, or isolated occurrences—such as sporadic gunfire in war poetry or sporadic bursts of hope within an elegy. Guide students to notice how poets use irregular spacing, unpredictable line breaks, and sporadic rhyme schemes to physically reflect erratic emotional states or chaotic events. Related terms include episodic, fitful, intermittent, and scattered.
Also Known As
Occasional Scattered Intermittent Irregular
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