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

Leslie Pinckney Hill Leslie Pinckney Hill

Poet B

Otto Leland Bohanan Otto Leland Bohanan
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 71% Poems 86% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Leslie Pinckney Hill

Leslie Pinckney Hill

14 May 1880 – 15 February 1960 (~80)
2 live poems · English

Leslie Pinckney Hill entered the world on May 14, 1880, in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of Samuel H. Hill, a man who had known the brutal chains of enslavement, and Sarah E. Hill. In the shadow of the post-Reconstruction South, where the promises of freedom still clashed with the realities of Jim Crow oppression, young Leslie’s early years were steeped in the rhythms of a family striving for dignity and self-determin…

“The man of culture is not to be surprised, or stampeded, or hurried. He can be neither frustrated nor defeated.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Otto Leland Bohanan

Otto Leland Bohanan

c. 1895 – 6 December 1932 (~37)
2 live poems · English

Otto Leland Bohanan, born around 1895 in Washington, D.C., and dead in New York City on December 6, 1932, belonged to the first generation of African American artists whose work helped prepare the ground for the Harlem Renaissance. He was a poet, composer, baritone, teacher, and cultivated public intellectual, a figure whose gifts moved easily among literature, music, education, and fraternity life. His surviving rep…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Nature Poets, Poet-Musicians, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Leslie Pinckney Hill
Otto Leland Bohanan
1880 1960
They overlapped for 38 years (1895–1932). When Otto Leland Bohanan was born, Leslie Pinckney Hill was about 15. Leslie Pinckney Hill was about 52 when Otto Leland Bohanan died.
Leslie Pinckney Hill in history Otto Leland Bohanan in history Years they were given

On the map

About 247 km separate Lynchburg, Virginia, USA from Washington, D.C., USA. Shared ground: United States.

Leslie Pinckney Hill

Otto Leland Bohanan

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

african life world beauty

Leslie Pinckney Hill only

hill power self divine education suffering oppression social poor

Otto Leland Bohanan only

light dawn awakening renewal love beloved

From the biographies

the crisis

Leslie Pinckney Hill: lynchburg virginia, east orange new jersey, harvard university, booker t. washington, the wings of oppression, cheyney state teachers college, jane ethel clark, the crisis. Otto Leland Bohanan: washington, d.c., new york city, the dawn’s awake!, the washer-woman, omega psi phi, howard university, the crisis, w. e. b. du bois.

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 Teacher
Leslie Pinckney Hill
78% life
Compare
Go, Give the World
Otto Leland Bohanan
The Wings of Oppression
Leslie Pinckney Hill
78%
Compare
The Dawn's Awake!
Otto Leland Bohanan
The Teacher
Leslie Pinckney Hill
77% african, life
Compare
The Dawn's Awake!
Otto Leland Bohanan
The Wings of Oppression
Leslie Pinckney Hill
76% world, beauty
Compare
Go, Give the World
Otto Leland Bohanan

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'
1895 The X-Ray Discovery
1896 Publication of 'A Shropshire Lad'
1896 Publication of 'The Story of the Other Wise Man'
1897 J.J. Thomson discovers the electron at the Cavendish Laboratory
1897 Ronald Ross Demonstrates Mosquito Transmission of Malaria
1898 Crane's Experience in the Spanish-American War
1901 Establishment of the Nobel Prizes

Leslie Pinckney Hill

1888 Relocation to East Orange, New Jersey
1898 Graduation from High School
1899 Enrollment at Harvard University
1903 Graduation from Harvard University
1917 First Major Publication
1940 Publication of 'The Poet's Voice'
1945 Awarded the Harmon Foundation Award
1960 Death of Leslie Pinckney Hill

Otto Leland Bohanan

1910 Graduation from M Street High School
1911 Enrollment at Catholic University of America
1925 Publication of 'Songs of the Soul'
1926 Collaboration with the Harlem Renaissance artists
1927 Teaching at a local school in New York City
1928 Participation in the NAACP
1931 Publication of 'The Heart's Echo'
1932 Illness and final years in New York City

Emotional landscapes

Leslie Pinckney Hill: Spirituality, Sorrow, Tenderness. Otto Leland Bohanan: Joy, Longing, Wonder.

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