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

Symbolic expression

Concept
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

Poetic language in which terms are used metaphorically to represent larger ideas

Detailed Definition
Symbolic expression in poetry refers to the use of objects, actions, or images to represent abstract ideas, emotions, or spiritual states beyond their literal meaning, functioning as a condensed form of metaphor that accrues significance through context and cultural resonance; effective symbolic expression avoids didacticism by allowing symbols to remain open-ended and multivalent, as in the raven in Poe’s poem embodying grief and the unknowable, or the plums in Williams’ “This Is Just To Say” suggesting transgression and sensuality.
Example
Example in poetry:
Symbolic expression appears in Blake’s “The Tyger,” where the tiger symbolizes divine terror and creative power; in Plath’s “Mirror,” the glass becomes a symbol of truth and aging; Neruda’s “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” uses the fish to symbolize ecological and existential vulnerability; Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” transforms a deferred dream into a symbolic “raisin in the sun”; Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” uses the self as a symbol of diasporic fragmentation and healing.
Additional Notes
Symbolic expression conveys meaning through objects, colors, or actions rather than direct statement. Related to materialization. Identify recurring symbols—track how their meaning shifts across the poem’s arc.
Also Known As
Figurative symbolism Allegorical image Metaphorical expression Representational language Figurative Figurative diction veiled phrase
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