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

Tender style

Style
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 literary or artistic style characterized by soft emotional warmth, quiet intimacy, vulnerability, and compassionate tones.

Detailed Definition
Tender style, a poetic approach that foregrounds emotional openness, vulnerability, gentleness, and sincere intimacy, enables poets to explore the nuances of human connection, affection, healing through sensitivity, and the beauty of unarmored expression in relationships or self-reflection. This style contrasts with more formal or ironic modes by prioritizing heartfelt authenticity, subtle emotional shading, and empathetic resonance, making it particularly effective for love lyrics, personal meditations, grief processing, and celebrations of quiet relational moments that foster deep reader connection and emotional catharsis.
Example
Example in poetry:
William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say” creates tenderness through an intimate domestic note and small shared details; Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” moves from close observation toward a compassionate act of release; In “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden’s restrained voice reveals care that was not openly spoken; Tender style favors gentleness, attention, vulnerability, and emotional precision over sentimentality
Additional Notes
Tender style is an ethics of attention: it treats vulnerability, care, and intimacy with gentleness, often using soft diction, close observation, and an avoidance of grandstanding. Students should see tenderness as craft, not sentimentality: specificity and restraint keep it from becoming sugary. Discuss tonal techniques: quiet address, small gestures, and concrete domestic details can carry profound feeling. In writing, focus on care enacted rather than declared: show a hand adjusting a blanket, a remembered phrase, a shared silence. Revision tip: cut abstract statements of love and replace them with sensory particulars and precise actions. Tender style can also be politically significant, offering tenderness as resistance in harsh contexts; pair it with testimonial or social realist poems to explore that contrast.
Also Known As
Gentle Style Intimate Style Soft-Lyric Style
Skip to main content