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 V

Vicious circle

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

An idiom describing a self-perpetuating cycle of problems where each attempt to solve an issue creates new conditions that reinforce the original problem, preventing resolution.

Detailed Definition
Vicious circle means a repeating cycle in which one problem causes another that then worsens the first. In poetry, the idiom is useful for addiction, poverty, resentment, violence, guilt, insomnia, and social injustice. Its circular image suggests entrapment, recurrence, and lack of escape, while “vicious” adds moral and emotional severity. A poet may use it to show how suffering becomes self-reinforcing. The phrase is valuable for exploring cycles that require interruption rather than mere endurance.
Example
Example in poetry:
A social poem might describe debt and hunger as a vicious circle that traps the poor; In a grief poem, sleeplessness and worry become a vicious circle before dawn; The phrase means a repeating problem in which each part worsens the other; A poet can use it for entrapment.
Additional Notes
A vicious circle is a self-perpetuating problem in which each effect worsens its own cause. In poetry, it can describe poverty, addiction, resentment, violence, anxiety, environmental damage, or historical injustice. The circle image suggests entrapment without clear beginning or exit. Students should compare it with cycles in nature, which may be renewing; a vicious circle is destructive repetition. It pairs well with wheels, loops, mirrors, and recurring lines.
Also Known As
Circular argument
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