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

surface cracking

Device
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 technique creating impression of textural fragmentation or breaking in verse

Detailed Definition
Surface cracking describes textural effects in poetry where the apparent unity or smoothness of language, syntax, or imagery is disrupted by multiple small breaks or fissures that suggest instability without complete fragmentation. This technique creates impressions of stress, weathering, or incipient dissolution through the introduction of minor discontinuities that fracture coherence while maintaining overall integrity. Surface cracking can represent psychological pressure, linguistic inadequacy, or thematic concerns with fragility and impermanence, engaging readers in perceiving patterns of disruption within ostensibly unified texts.
Example
Example in poetry:
Surface cracking appears in M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Zong!”, where legal text fractures to reveal trauma; In Anne Carson’s “Glass, Irony and God,” prose cracks into lyric; In Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,” smooth prose disrupted by racial violence; In Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth,” narrative surface cracks with memory; In Solmaz Sharif’s “Look,” military language cracks under emotional weight.
Additional Notes
Surface cracking describes textual imperfections or disruptions that suggest deeper instability—may include fragmented syntax, misspellings, or tonal shifts indicating psychological or social fracture.
Also Known As
Textural fissure Surface fracture Aesthetic cracking Visual rupture Craquelure
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