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

Tempering

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

Tempering is the controlled modulation of a poem’s force so it can sustain emotional and formal pressure.

Detailed Definition
Tempering differs from simple softening because it aims to preserve strength while preventing brittleness. A poet may temper grief through concrete detail, temper certainty through an unanswered question, or temper lyric beauty with an abrasive fact. The resulting poem can carry intensity over many lines without exhausting the reader. In public poetry, tempering also helps keep moral urgency from becoming instruction, allowing image, rhythm, and ambiguity to make the stakes felt rather than merely declared.
Example
Example in poetry:
Tempering gives steel strength through controlled heating and cooling, and poetic tempering gives an intense emotion a measured form; A poet can temper an accusation with a quiet final image, making the poem more complex than a direct outburst; A strict meter may temper wild grief by giving each line a steady boundary; The phrase “I forgive you, though the door remains closed” tempers tenderness with resolve
Additional Notes
Tempering is the adjustment of a poem’s intensity so that its emotion, argument, or sound remains powerful without becoming uncontrolled or monotonous. A poet may temper anger through understatement, vary a sequence of dense images with plain speech, or place a quiet ending after a loud climax. Tempering does not mean weakening feeling; it gives feeling shape and endurance. Read for dynamic range, pacing, tonal contrast, and moments of release. Related concepts include modulation, restraint, balance, counterpoint, and tonal control.
Also Known As
Heat Treatment Hardening temperate
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