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



Stylized pointing

Sound
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 deliberate use of punctuation or notation in a decorative and expressive poetic manner

Detailed Definition
Stylized pointing in poetry refers to a rhetorical or typographical gesture—such as direct address, demonstrative pronouns (“this,” “that”), or spatial markers—that draws the reader’s attention to a specific image, idea, or moment within the text, creating a sense of immediacy or shared focus; this technique, akin to a speaker physically pointing during oral performance, anchors abstract reflection in concrete detail, as in William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say,” where “this” implicates both the plums and the act of confession, or in Lucille Clifton’s use of “look” to command witness and empathy.
Example
Example in poetry:
Stylized pointing uses directional language for emphasis: Shakespeare’s “Look how the floor of heaven” (Merchant of Venice); Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –”; contemporary examples include Ocean Vuong’s “Look at me, I’m a wound” (“Aubade with Burning City”); Rainer Maria Rilke’s “You must change your life” as imperative pointing; biblical psalms (“Lift up your eyes to the hills”).
Additional Notes
Stylized pointing uses conventional phrases (“behold,” “lo”) to direct reader attention. Related to traditional phrasing and outward-pointing. Common in biblical or epic poetry—note how it creates ritual distance or dramatic emphasis.
Also Known As
Decorative punctuation Expressive symbols Artistic marks Poetic signs Expressive punctuation
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