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

Tall tale

Idiomatic Phrase
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 narrative genre characterized by hyperbolic exaggeration and impossible feats, often presented with deadpan seriousness to create humor or highlight cultural values through fantastical storytelling rather than factual accuracy.

Detailed Definition
Tall tale means an exaggerated, improbable, or humorous story, often told with confidence and relish. In poetry, the idiom connects to oral tradition, folklore, boasting, frontier humour, sailor stories, and unreliable narration. A tall tale may be false in fact yet true to desire, culture, or imagination. Poets can use it to explore the pleasures of embellishment, the social function of storytelling, and the boundary between lie and legend. The phrase is useful for narrative voice and comic hyperbole.
Example
Example in poetry:
A comic ballad might let the fisherman tell a tall tale about a trout as large as a boat; In a frontier poem, a tall tale can turn hardship into legend; The phrase means an exaggerated or unbelievable story; A poet can use it for humour and oral tradition.
Additional Notes
A tall tale is an exaggerated, fanciful, or unbelievable story, often told for entertainment. In poetry, it suits folk traditions, frontier humour, sailors’ yarns, comic boasting, and unreliable narration. The word tall gives the lie vertical growth, as if the story stretches beyond ordinary proportion. Students should ask whether exaggeration deceives or delights. The phrase pairs well with firesides, taverns, travellers, legends, and the pleasure of invention.
Also Known As
exaggerated story
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