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

Josephine Preston Peabody Josephine Preston Peabody

Poet B

Alfred Kreymborg Alfred Kreymborg
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 64% Poems 79% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Josephine Preston Peabody

Josephine Preston Peabody

30 May 1874 – 4 December 1922 (~48)
2 live poems · English

Josephine Preston Peabody, later Josephine Preston Peabody Marks, was born in New York City on 30 May 1874 and died on 4 December 1922. During her comparatively short life she became one of the most admired American poets and verse dramatists of the early twentieth century. She was praised for a voice at once musical, delicate, morally serious, and theatrically ambitious. Her poetry moved easily among childhood, myth…

“Oh, why was I born with a thousand wings of the spirit and a ball and chain on every hand and foot of me?”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Alfred Kreymborg

Alfred Kreymborg

10 December 1883 – 14 August 1966 (~83)
2 live poems · English

In the early decades of the twentieth century, when American poetry was struggling to break free from the strictures of Victorian convention, a slight, chess-obsessed son of German immigrants emerged as one of the most influential figures in literary modernism. Alfred Kreymborg, born on December 10, 1883, in New York City, would become far more than a poet. He was a literary impresario, a talent scout with an uncanny…

“We have to learn to live with one another, or we shall cease to live at all.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Josephine Preston Peabody
Alfred Kreymborg
1874 1966
They overlapped for 40 years (1883–1922). When Alfred Kreymborg was born, Josephine Preston Peabody was about 9. Alfred Kreymborg was about 39 when Josephine Preston Peabody died.
Josephine Preston Peabody in history Alfred Kreymborg in history Years they were given

On the map

About 0 km separate New York City, New York, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Both have ground in New York City and New York.

Josephine Preston Peabody

Alfred Kreymborg

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

Josephine Preston Peabody only

love birds nobody secrecy connection blue roses enchanted power truth briars reed

Alfred Kreymborg only

play prodigy dignity life idealism stream dream tree bird self

From the biographies

new york city

Josephine Preston Peabody: new york city, dorchester, the piper, lionel s. marks, the singing leaves, the wayfarers, radcliffe college, george santayana. Alfred Kreymborg: new york city, german immigrants, greenwich village, alfred stieglitz, the glebe, des imagistes, imagism, others: a magazine of the new verse.

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.

The Reed
Josephine Preston Peabody
71%
Compare
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
The Enchanted Sheep-Fold
Josephine Preston Peabody
71% world
Compare
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
The Reed
Josephine Preston Peabody
68%
Compare
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
The Enchanted Sheep-Fold
Josephine Preston Peabody
67% world
Compare
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom

Josephine Preston Peabody

1881 Family Relocation to Dorchester
1888 Education at Girls' Latin School
1894 First Published Poem
1902 Marriage to George H. Peabody
1915 Publication of 'The Singing Leaves'
1917 Publication of 'The Road to the Sea'
1920 Publication of 'The Child of the Sea'
1922 Final Years and Legacy

Alfred Kreymborg

1900 Kreymborg's Musical Education
1914 Publication of 'The Little Review'
1915 Founding of 'Others' Magazine
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry' Anthology
1920 Kreymborg's Friendship with William Carlos Williams
1920 Publication of 'The New York Times' Poetry Section
1945 Kreymborg's Involvement with the New American Poetry

Emotional landscapes

Josephine Preston Peabody: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality. Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.

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