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.

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 persona

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

A speaker in a poem who represents abstract ideas or collective identities

Detailed Definition
Symbolic persona is a poetic speaker who functions not as a personal “I” but as a representative of abstract ideas, collective identities, or archetypal forces—such as Death in Dickinson, the Muse in classical poetry, or America in Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” This device allows poets to explore universal themes through a mediated voice, distancing personal emotion to achieve mythic or philosophical scope. The symbolic persona often employs elevated diction, allegory, or dramatic monologue, and must be given distinct motives, speech patterns, and internal logic to avoid flat personification. When successful, it transforms individual utterance into communal or cosmic statement, bridging the personal and the transcendent.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Speaker in Dickinson’s poems often embodies Death or Immortality; The “I” in Whitman’s “Song of Myself” represents collective American identity; The persona in Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” symbolizes rebirth through suffering; The narrator in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” embodies modern alienation; The voice in Audre Lorde’s “Coal” symbolizes Black lesbian identity and transformation; The “we” in Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” represents marginalized youth
Additional Notes
Symbolic persona uses a speaker who represents abstract ideas (Death, America, The Muse) rather than a personal “I.” Common in allegory and dramatic monologue. Students should give the persona distinct voice and motives. Avoid flat personification—imbue with complexity and contradiction.
Also Known As
allegorical speaker representative voice emblematic narrator emblematic character Representative character
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