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

Joyce Kilmer Joyce Kilmer

Poet B

Jean Toomer Jean Toomer
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 56% Blended 56%
Swap sides Another related pair
Joyce Kilmer

Joyce Kilmer

6 December 1886 – 30 July 1918 (~32)
1 live poem · English

Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born on 6 December 1886 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, into a household in which intellectual seriousness and artistic feeling were not opposites but companion forces. His father, Frederick Barnett Kilmer, was a physician, analytical chemist, and later a leading scientific figure at Johnson & Johnson; his work helped establish standards for pharmaceutical and consumer-health products in an era…

“I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time... I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental – in fact I wanted Faith.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities
Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer

26 December 1894 – 30 March 1967 (~73)
1 live poem · English

On December 26, 1894, in Washington, D.C., Nathan Pinchback Toomer was born into a world of racial complexity that would profoundly shape his literary vision and personal identity. Known to history as Jean Toomer, this enigmatic figure would produce one of the most celebrated works of the Harlem Renaissance before retreating into relative obscurity, leaving behind a legacy as puzzling as it is profound. His life stor…

“I am of no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Modernist Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Joyce Kilmer
Jean Toomer
1886 1967
They overlapped for 25 years (1894–1918). When Jean Toomer was born, Joyce Kilmer was about 8. Jean Toomer was about 24 when Joyce Kilmer died.
Joyce Kilmer in history Jean Toomer in history Years they were given

On the map

About 284 km separate New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA from Washington, D.C., USA. Shared ground: United States.

Joyce Kilmer

Jean Toomer

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Joyce Kilmer only

tree life trees earth rain snow nature

Jean Toomer only

beauty dusk world rural

From the biographies

Joyce Kilmer: new brunswick, new jersey, aline murray, trees, roman catholicism, poetry society of america, columbia university, summer of love. Jean Toomer: washington d.c., harlem renaissance, sparta, georgia, pinckback benton stewart pinchback, nina pinchback toomer, karenitha, cotton song, reapers.

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.

Trees
Joyce Kilmer
67%
Compare
Karintha
Jean Toomer

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks
1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'
1895 The X-Ray Discovery
1896 Publication of 'A Shropshire Lad'
1896 Publication of 'The Story of the Other Wise Man'
1897 J.J. Thomson discovers the electron at the Cavendish Laboratory
1897 Ronald Ross Demonstrates Mosquito Transmission of Malaria

Joyce Kilmer

1904 Education at Rutgers College
1904 Transfer to Columbia University
1908 Marriage to Aline Murray
1909 Birth of First Child, Rose
1913 Publication of 'Trees and Other Poems'
1914 Becoming a Literary Critic for The New York Times
1917 Enlistment in the U.S. Army
1918 Death in World War I

Jean Toomer

1901 Jean Toomer's Mother Remarries
1909 Jean Toomer Attends M Street High School
1920 Jean Toomer Moves to Georgia
1920 Jean Toomer's Involvement with the Harlem Renaissance
1931 Jean Toomer's Marriage to Margery Latimer
1934 Jean Toomer's Spiritual Awakening
1935 Jean Toomer's Involvement with the Federal Writers' Project
1940 Jean Toomer's Move to Washington, D.C.

Emotional landscapes

Joyce Kilmer: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace. Jean Toomer: Longing, Sensuality, Sorrow.

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