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

town crier

Historical Office
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

An official who proclaims public announcements aloud in streets, often with a bell

Detailed Definition
The town crier appears in poetry as a voice of communal memory and civic ritual. Historically disseminating news before mass media, criers marked events with formal cadence. In verse, they symbolize authority, tradition, and the oral transmission of public life. Poets use town criers to evoke nostalgia, the weight of proclamation, or the human voice as a medium of shared reality in pre-literate or semi-literate communities.
Example
Example in poetry:
In civic odes, the town crier’s “Oyez!” cuts through market noise like a bell; Poets depict him as living newspaper, voice trembling with royal decrees or war news; His bell becomes a metronome of public life; In satirical verse, he announces absurdities with solemn gravity; The town crier’s echo lingers in empty squares, symbolizing lost community; Contemporary poetry uses “town crier” to mourn the decline of shared public space.
Additional Notes
Town criers announced proclamations, laws, or news in public squares, using bells and rhythmic calls for attention; their words carried legal force—poetic town criers may represent public voice, authority, or the oral transmission of power; their “Oyez!” punctuates historical verse as a sonic marker of civic ritual and communal hearing.
Also Known As
bellman crier
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