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



Compare Poets

Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.

Poet A

Cale Young Rice Cale Young Rice

Poet B

Kahlil Gibran Kahlil Gibran
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 66% Poems 87% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Cale Young Rice

Cale Young Rice

7 December 1872 – 24 January 1943 (~71)
8 live poems · English

Cale Young Rice was born on 7 December 1872 in Dixon, Kentucky, and died on 24 January 1943 in Louisville, Kentucky. During his lifetime he was a conspicuous, if never wholly central, figure in American letters: a poet of formal accomplishment, a playwright attracted to historical spectacle and moral conflict, a lecturer, traveler, and public literary presence. In the decades around 1900, when American poetry stood b…

“We must get rid of the "twilight zone" around poetry in which irresponsible criticism can ambush mere likes and dislikes.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran

6 January 1883 – 10 April 1931 (~48)
5 live poems · English

Kahlil Gibran, born on 6 January 1883 in the mountain town of Bsharri, in what is now northern Lebanon, and dead on 10 April 1931 in New York City, became one of the most widely read literary figures of the twentieth century. He was a poet, prose writer, essayist, painter, draftsman, cultural critic, and immigrant intellectual whose work traveled between Arabic and English, Lebanon and the United States, Christianity…

“When I am unhappy, dear Mary, I read your letters. When the mist overwhelms the I in me, I take two or three letters out of the little box and reread them.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Arabic Poets, Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Persian Mystic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder

In time

Cale Young Rice
Kahlil Gibran
1872 1943
They overlapped for 49 years (1883–1931). When Kahlil Gibran was born, Cale Young Rice was about 11. Cale Young Rice was about 59 when Kahlil Gibran died.

On the map

About 10,141 km separate Dixon, Kentucky, USA from Bsharri, Lebanon. Shared ground: United States.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

From the biographies

social

Cale Young Rice: dixon, kentucky, alice hegan rice, from dusk to dusk, many gods, a night in avignon, nirvana days, cumberland university, harvard university. Kahlil Gibran: bsharri, lebanon, new york city, the prophet, arab émigré literary movement, kamila rahmeh, khalil sa‘d gibran, mary elizabeth haskell.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

The Mystic
Cale Young Rice
76%
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
Sea-Hoardings
Cale Young Rice
75% life
Compare
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
On the Moor
Cale Young Rice
74% life
Compare
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
The Shrine of Shrines
Cale Young Rice
74%
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
The Mystic
Cale Young Rice
73% journey
Compare
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
Sea-Hoardings
Cale Young Rice
73% heart, nature
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Cale Young Rice: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality. Kahlil Gibran: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder.

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