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 Y

Yielding change

Device
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 subtle or gradual transformation within a poem that conveys adaptation or emotional softening

Detailed Definition
Yielding change describes a subtle, gradual transformation within a poem where resistance gives way to acceptance, softening, or adaptation—rather than abrupt reversal; it often manifests through shifts in diction, imagery, or rhythm that convey emotional maturation or quiet revelation; unlike the dramatic volta of the sonnet, yielding change is understated and cumulative, appearing in meditative poets like Jane Hirshfield, W.S. Merwin, and Ada Limón, where openness replaces confrontation as a mode of insight.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Jane Hirshfield’s “The Promise,” anger yields to acceptance: “I will not call you unkind again”; W.S. Merwin’s “Thanks” shows yielding change from despair to gratitude: “with the days themselves”; Louise Glück’s “The Wild Iris” moves from burial to rebirth: “I tell you I could speak again”; Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness” shifts from loss to compassion: “Before you know kindness… you must lose things”; Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City” yields from war memory to tender address: “Mother, mother, we’re still here”; Ada Limón’s “The Leash” transitions from pandemic fear to shared vulnerability: “we are all walking the same dog”
Additional Notes
Yielding change describes a subtle, often internal transformation in a poem where resistance gives way to acceptance, softening, or adaptation—rather than dramatic reversal; it appears in meditative or nature poetry (e.g., a speaker’s anger dissolving into rain imagery); distinct from volta or peripeteia, yielding change is gradual and often marked by enjambment, softened consonants, or shift from declarative to interrogative syntax; students can study this in Jane Hirshfield or W.S. Merwin; useful for exploring emotional nuance and anti-climactic resolution in contemporary lyric.
Also Known As
Gentle transformation soft pivot emotional yielding gradual poetic shift yielding shift
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