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

Start from scratch

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

Start from scratch means to begin anew without any prior advantage or preparation; in creative poetry, it symbolizes renewal, resilience, or the daunting yet liberating process of creation from nothingness.

Detailed Definition
Start from scratch means to begin again from the very beginning, without relying on previous work, materials, or advantages. In poetry, the idiom can describe rebuilding after failure, writing a new draft, leaving home, recovering from loss, or reinventing the self. “Scratch” suggests a starting line or bare mark, making beginnings feel humble and stripped down. A poet may use it with frustration or hope. The phrase is useful for themes of renewal, resilience, and the labour of reconstruction.
Example
Example in poetry:
A craft poem might begin again from scratch after the rhyme scheme collapses; In a migration poem, a family starts from scratch in a strange town with two bags and hope; The phrase means to begin again from nothing; A poet can use it for loss and fresh beginnings.
Additional Notes
Start from scratch means begin again from nothing or without previous preparation. The phrase may come from a starting line scratched into the ground. In poetry, it can express renewal, ruin, discipline, migration, artistic revision, or rebuilding after loss. Students should notice both humility and possibility: scratch is minimal, but it marks a beginning. It pairs well with bare tables, blank pages, ashes, foundations, and first marks.
Also Known As
Back to the drawing board
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