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

Yone Noguchi Yone Noguchi

Poet B

John Gould Fletcher John Gould Fletcher
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 67% Poems 84% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Yone Noguchi

Yone Noguchi

8 December 1875 – 13 July 1947 (~72)
4 live poems · English

In the annals of literary history, few figures occupy as singular a position as Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet who dared to write primarily in English during an era when such a choice seemed almost inconceivable. Born Yonejiro Noguchi on December 8, 1875, in the coastal town of Tsushima near Nagoya, Japan, he would become a pioneering voice in cross-cultural literature, a man who walked between East and West with rema…

“The gesticulation of Nature and Life emphatically drawn on the little pieces of ivory.”

Neighbourhood: Imagist Poets, Japanese Haiku Masters, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher

3 January 1886 – 20 May 1950 (~64)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American poetry, few figures embody the restless spirit of early twentieth-century modernism quite like John Gould Fletcher. Born into the genteel society of Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 3, 1886, Fletcher would traverse continents and literary movements, ultimately crafting a body of work that bridged the gap between traditional American verse and the revolutionary experiments of European mode…

“It is time to create something new. It is time to strip poetry of meaningless tatters of form, and to clothe her in new, suitable garments.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Yone Noguchi
John Gould Fletcher
1875 1950
They overlapped for 62 years (1886–1947). When John Gould Fletcher was born, Yone Noguchi was about 11. John Gould Fletcher was about 61 when Yone Noguchi died.
Yone Noguchi in history John Gould Fletcher in history Years they were given

On the map

About 10,723 km separate Tsushima, Aichi, Japan from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Yone Noguchi

John Gould Fletcher

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 beauty

Yone Noguchi only

life clouds self voice songs apparition absence beloved presence stars love desire

John Gould Fletcher only

fantasy dream grey water river reality imagination ship islands blue memory decay

From the biographies

imagist movement

Yone Noguchi: tsushima, nagoya, keio university, joaquin miller, seen and unseen, the american diary of a japanese girl, from the eastern sea, the pilgrimage. John Gould Fletcher: little rock, arkansas river valley, ezra pound, imagist movement, irradiations: sand and spray, blue symphony, goblins and pagodas, the tree of life.

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.

I and Nature are one in sweet weariness
Yone Noguchi
79% world
Compare
Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
Apparition
Yone Noguchi
77%
Compare
Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
Hokku
Yone Noguchi
76% beauty
Compare
Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
Apparition
Yone Noguchi
74%
Compare
In the grey skirts of the fog
John Gould Fletcher
Is there anything new under the sun
Yone Noguchi
74% world
Compare
Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
I and Nature are one in sweet weariness
Yone Noguchi
72%
Compare
In the grey skirts of the fog
John Gould Fletcher

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1886 Coca-Cola invented by John Pemberton in Atlanta
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia
1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech

Yone Noguchi

1892 Education at Keio University
1893 Immigration to the United States
1908 Friendship with Ezra Pound
1910 Publication of 'The Pilgrimage'
1912 Return to Japan
1915 Publication of 'The American Diary'
1916 Friendship with Rabindranath Tagore
1921 Publication of 'The Spirit of Japan'

John Gould Fletcher

1904 Education at Harvard University
1910 Marriage to Emily T. Fletcher
1916 Publication of 'The Poems of John Gould Fletcher'
1919 Move to England
1920 Friendship with Ezra Pound
1930 Publication of 'The Burning Fountain'
1935 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1939 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Emotional landscapes

Yone Noguchi: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness. John Gould Fletcher: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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