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 W

whittle

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

Whittle means to carve or shape by cutting away small pieces; in poetry, it can suggest gradual reduction, refinement, or shaping through subtraction.

Detailed Definition
In literal craft, whittling is the patient carving of wood into a desired shape. In poetry, it may describe the way a poem is made more precise by removing excess language or detail. It fits craft language because it values slow, selective making.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet may describe whittling wood as metaphor for the patient, gradual process of poetic revision; Whittled figures in folk poetry often symbolize simple, honest craftsmanship; A poem about grief might describe whittling away at pain slowly over years; Whittling a walking stick can serve as quiet meditative image in a pastoral poem; A poet describing childhood might use whittling with a grandparent as a formative shared memory; Whittling down a manuscript mirrors the sculptor's process of revealing form by removing excess.
Additional Notes
Whittle describes carving by gradually removing small pieces, often used to discuss the patient, incremental nature of poetic revision, where a poem is refined not through a single decisive act but through repeated small removals over time; instructors might explore how whittling imagery, often associated with folk craftsmanship and quiet, meditative labor, provides a humble counterpoint to more dramatic sculptural metaphors like chiseling.
Also Known As
carve pare shave whittle down
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