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

Robert Nathaniel Dett Robert Nathaniel Dett

Poet B

James Weldon Johnson James Weldon Johnson
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 74% Poems 80% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Nathaniel Dett

Robert Nathaniel Dett

11 October 1882 – 2 October 1943 (~61)
3 live poems · English

Robert Nathaniel Dett entered the world on October 11, 1882, in the small village of Drummondville, Ontario—now absorbed into the bustling splendor of Niagara Falls, Canada—amid the roar of one of nature’s most awe-inspiring wonders. He left it on October 2, 1943, at the age of sixty, felled by a heart attack in Battle Creek, Michigan, while tirelessly touring with a USO chorus to lift the spirits of troops during Wo…

“The rhythm of the songs might very well be compared to that of the human pulse which is a series of throbs all of equal intensity.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Longing
James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson

17 June 1871 – 26 June 1938 (~67)
2 live poems · English

James Weldon Johnson entered the world on June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida, a bustling port city where the St. Johns River met the Atlantic and where the scars of Reconstruction still lingered in the humid air. He left it on June 26, 1938, in a car accident near Wiscasset, Maine, at the age of sixty-seven, his body laid to rest in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Between those dates stretched a life of astonish…

“The Negro's greatest contribution to American civilization has been in the field of music.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing

In time

Robert Nathaniel Dett
James Weldon Johnson
1871 1943
They overlapped for 57 years (1882–1938). When Robert Nathaniel Dett was born, James Weldon Johnson was about 11. Robert Nathaniel Dett was about 56 when James Weldon Johnson died.

On the map

About 1,508 km separate Drummondville, Ontario, Canada from Jacksonville, Florida, USA. 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

Robert Nathaniel Dett: drummondville, niagara falls, battle creek, the album of a heart, after the cakewalk, listen to the lambs, hampton institute, antonín dvořák. James Weldon Johnson: jacksonville, florida, harlem renaissance, lift ev'ry voice and sing, grace nail, the autobiography of an ex-colored man, fifty years and other poems, the book of american negro poetry, god's trombones.

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.

Yield but thy love to me
Robert Nathaniel Dett
81%
Compare
Life
James Weldon Johnson
Yield but thy love to me
Robert Nathaniel Dett
71% heart
Compare
Girl of Fifteen
James Weldon Johnson
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
67%
Compare
Life
James Weldon Johnson
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
66%
Compare
Girl of Fifteen
James Weldon Johnson
The Rubinstein Staccato Etude
Robert Nathaniel Dett
66%
Compare
Girl of Fifteen
James Weldon Johnson
The Rubinstein Staccato Etude
Robert Nathaniel Dett
65%
Compare
Life
James Weldon Johnson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Robert Nathaniel Dett: Tenderness, Joy, Longing. James Weldon Johnson: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing.

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