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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Grace Fallow Norton Grace Fallow Norton

Poet B

Helen Dudley Helen Dudley
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 83% Blended 83%
Swap sides Another related pair
Grace Fallow Norton

Grace Fallow Norton

29 October 1876 – 1926 (~50)
4 live poems · English

Grace Fallow Norton, born on 29 October 1876 in Northfield, Minnesota, and deceased in 1926, belongs to that large and consequential company of American poets whose work was respected in its own moment yet gradually slipped from broad public view. Her surviving reputation rests chiefly on a small body of lyric poetry, especially the 1912 collection Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s, a book whose title alone suggest…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Helen Dudley

Helen Dudley

3 June 1886 – 1932 (~46)
1 live poem · English

Helen Dudley was born on 3 June 1886 in Chicago, Illinois, and died in 1932, leaving behind a body of work that was small in quantity but unusually concentrated in feeling. Her name has never become as familiar as those of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, H. D., Amy Lowell, or Elinor Wylie, yet her poems belong to the same unsettled and fertile era in American writing. She wrote during the transition from late…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Grace Fallow Norton
Helen Dudley
1876 1932
They overlapped for 41 years (1886–1926). When Helen Dudley was born, Grace Fallow Norton was about 10. Helen Dudley was about 40 when Grace Fallow Norton died.

On the map

About 533 km separate Northfield, Minnesota, USA from Chicago, Illinois, 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

Grace Fallow Norton only

Helen Dudley only

From the biographies

women

Grace Fallow Norton: northfield, minnesota, little gray songs from st. joseph's, smith college, christina rossetti, elizabeth barrett browning, emily dickinson, brontë sisters. Helen Dudley: chicago, poems, 1919, imagism, harriet monroe, emotional reserve, lyric form, solitude.

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.

Love is a Terrible Thing
Grace Fallow Norton
81%
Compare
To One Unknown
Helen Dudley
Oh, the Burden, the Burden of Love Ungiven
Grace Fallow Norton
79% world
Compare
To One Unknown
Helen Dudley
The Journey
Grace Fallow Norton
73% world
Compare
To One Unknown
Helen Dudley
Silver Spoils
Grace Fallow Norton
71%
Compare
To One Unknown
Helen Dudley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Grace Fallow Norton: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Helen Dudley: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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