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 T

Tack

Craft Terms
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 tack is a small directional adjustment that changes a poem’s course without breaking its continuity.

Detailed Definition
A tack may be a shift in speaker, tense, image, rhythm, or argument that turns the poem toward newly discovered material. Unlike a full reversal, it changes direction gradually while retaining contact with what came before. A poem about weather might tack from description to family history through one repeated phrase, allowing association to steer the movement. Tacks keep a lyric alive by preventing its initial plan from becoming a rigid route.
Example
Example in poetry:
A tack is a small nail, so “the moon was a tack pinning night” makes a tiny object hold a vast image in place; A poem can change tack when its argument or emotional direction suddenly shifts; Short, abrupt lines may give a poem a tack-like sharpness; Nautical poetry uses tack as a sailing turn, making it an image of altered course or strategy.
Additional Notes
A tack is a small change in direction that preserves a poem’s momentum. It may be a pivot from memory to observation, a turn in argument, a changed pronoun, or a new image that quietly redirects attention. Effective tacks feel both surprising and prepared for. Look for them near line breaks, stanza breaks, or volta-like turns, and ask how the adjustment changes the reader’s expectations.
Other Meanings of “Tack”
Also Known As
Small Nail Temporary Fastening
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