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

Cale Young Rice Cale Young Rice

Poet B

John Crowe Ransom John Crowe Ransom
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 76% Poems 89% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Cale Young Rice

Cale Young Rice

7 December 1872 – 24 January 1943 (~71)
8 live poems · English

Cale Young Rice was born on 7 December 1872 in Dixon, Kentucky, and died on 24 January 1943 in Louisville, Kentucky. During his lifetime he was a conspicuous, if never wholly central, figure in American letters: a poet of formal accomplishment, a playwright attracted to historical spectacle and moral conflict, a lecturer, traveler, and public literary presence. In the decades around 1900, when American poetry stood b…

“Art freedom and finality no more spring from excesses than from conservatism.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom

30 April 1888 – 3 July 1974 (~86)
4 live poems · English

John Crowe Ransom stood at the crossroads of American poetry and criticism in the twentieth century, a figure whose influence extended far beyond the elegant verses he composed. Born on April 30, 1888, in Pulaski, Tennessee, he would become the architect of a critical revolution, the mentor to some of America's finest poets, and the principal voice of a distinctly Southern literary aesthetic that sought to reconcile…

“The department of English is charged with the understanding and the communication of literature, an art, yet it has usually forgotten to inquire into the peculiar constitution and structure of its product.”

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

In time

Cale Young Rice
John Crowe Ransom
1872 1974
They overlapped for 56 years (1888–1943). When John Crowe Ransom was born, Cale Young Rice was about 16. John Crowe Ransom was about 55 when Cale Young Rice died.
Cale Young Rice in history John Crowe Ransom in history Years they were given

On the map

About 264 km separate Dixon, Kentucky, USA from Pulaski, Tennessee, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Cale Young Rice

John Crowe Ransom

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

life world death woman beauty

Cale Young Rice only

grave nature mother moor grief quest journey sublime mystic divine love

John Crowe Ransom only

bells body girl daughter lady fever lace cold illness eyes blue

From the biographies

Cale Young Rice: dixon, kentucky, alice hegan rice, from dusk to dusk, many gods, a night in avignon, nirvana days, cumberland university, harvard university. John Crowe Ransom: pulaski, tennessee, john james ransom, ella crowe ransom, vanderbilt university, fugitive group, the fugitive, allen tate, robert penn warren.

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.

Sea-Hoardings
Cale Young Rice
79% life, beauty
Compare
Her Eyes
John Crowe Ransom
On the Moor
Cale Young Rice
78% beauty, death
Compare
Here Lies a Lady
John Crowe Ransom
On the Moor
Cale Young Rice
78% life, world, death
Compare
Bells for John Whitesides' Daughter
John Crowe Ransom
Millicent Passes
Cale Young Rice
76% death, woman
Compare
Here Lies a Lady
John Crowe Ransom
A Woman Wronged
Cale Young Rice
75% woman, death
Compare
Here Lies a Lady
John Crowe Ransom
Wanting the Moon
Cale Young Rice
75% woman
Compare
Her Eyes
John Crowe Ransom

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks

Cale Young Rice

1890 Education at Cumberland University
1894 Education at Harvard University
1900 Publication of 'From Dusk to Dusk'
1908 Publication of 'Nirvana Days'
1910 Move to New York City
1915 Friendship with Robert Frost
1921 Publication of 'The Book of the Dead'
1930 Publication of 'The Ghost of the Sun'

John Crowe Ransom

1909 Education at Vanderbilt University
1910 Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford
1913 Marriage to Margaret E. McKinney
1925 Publication of 'Chasing the Green Lion'
1930 Involvement with the Southern Agrarians
1938 Publication of 'The World's Body'
1939 Founding of the Kenyon Review
1941 Publication of 'The New Criticism'

Emotional landscapes

Cale Young Rice: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality. John Crowe Ransom: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.

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