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.

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

Stephen Vincent Benét Stephen Vincent Benét

Poet B

John Van Alstyne Weaver John Van Alstyne Weaver
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 77% Poems 80% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Vincent Benét

Stephen Vincent Benét

22 July 1898 – 13 March 1943 (~45)
2 live poems · English

Stephen Vincent Benét was a poet, novelist, and storyteller whose voice captured the sprawling, contradictory soul of America with a warmth and vigor that few writers of his era could match. In an age when modernism often turned inward toward fragmentation and irony, Benét looked outward, embracing history, folklore, and the ordinary heroism of everyday people. His words thrum with the crack of rifles at Harpers Ferr…

“We cannot afford the creeping paralysis that destroys the effective will of democracy—the paralysis carried by hate and rancor, between class and class, person and person, party and party.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Van Alstyne Weaver

John Van Alstyne Weaver

17 July 1893 – 14 June 1938 (~45)
3 live poems · English

John Van Alstyne Weaver emerged from the vibrant literary ferment of early twentieth-century America as a poet who dared to capture the raw, unpolished heartbeat of everyday life. Born into a world of privilege yet drawn irresistibly to the voices of plumbers, shop girls, taxi drivers, and soldiers, he transformed the slang and cadence of the American street into poetry that pulsed with authenticity and charm. His wo…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Stephen Vincent Benét
John Van Alstyne Weaver
1893 1943
They overlapped for 41 years (1898–1938). When Stephen Vincent Benét was born, John Van Alstyne Weaver was about 5. Stephen Vincent Benét was about 40 when John Van Alstyne Weaver died.
Stephen Vincent Benét in history John Van Alstyne Weaver in history Years they were given

On the map

About 767 km separate Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA from Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Stephen Vincent Benét

John Van Alstyne Weaver

Open both on the History Atlas

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

world love

Stephen Vincent Benét only

innovator pyramid tradition innovation mind praise

John Van Alstyne Weaver only

weaver carpe diem authenticity life beloved letters letter note remembered romantic ordinary

From the biographies

america

Stephen Vincent Benét: fountain hill, harpers ferry, john brown's body, rosemary carr, pulitzer prize, the devil and daniel webster, yale university, william rose benét. John Van Alstyne Weaver: charlotte, north carolina, chicago, hamilton college, harvard university, h. l. mencken, in american: poems, finders: more poems in american, to youth.

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.

American Names
Stephen Vincent Benét
70%
Compare
Carpe Diem
John Van Alstyne Weaver
American Names
Stephen Vincent Benét
70% world
Compare
Perhaps
John Van Alstyne Weaver
American Names
Stephen Vincent Benét
70% love
Compare
Letters
John Van Alstyne Weaver
The Innovator
Stephen Vincent Benét
65%
Compare
Perhaps
John Van Alstyne Weaver
The Innovator
Stephen Vincent Benét
65%
Compare
Letters
John Van Alstyne Weaver
The Innovator
Stephen Vincent Benét
61%
Compare
Carpe Diem
John Van Alstyne Weaver

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1898 Crane's Experience in the Spanish-American War
1901 Establishment of the Nobel Prizes
1902 The Wright 1902 glider achieves practical three-axis control
1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1903 Publication of 'The Souls of Black Folk'
1903 Wright Brothers Achieve First Powered Flight Using Wind Tunnel Research
1906 Appointment as editor of Punch
1906 Upton Sinclair Publishes 'The Jungle'

Stephen Vincent Benét

1922 Marriage to Elinor Wylie
1928 Publication of 'John Brown's Body'
1929 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1930 Relocation to New York City
1936 Publication of 'The Devil and Daniel Webster'
1944 Second Pulitzer Prize for 'Western Star'

John Van Alstyne Weaver

1894 Relocation to Chicago
1911 Education at the University of Chicago
1922 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1925 Friendship with H. L. Mencken
1926 Relocation to New York City
1928 Publication of 'The Jazz Age'
1930 Involvement in the Harlem Renaissance
1937 Illness and Final Works

Emotional landscapes

Stephen Vincent Benét: Sorrow, Irony, Despair. John Van Alstyne Weaver: Longing, Sensuality, Sorrow.

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