A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

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.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. 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

Benjamin Griffith Brawley Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Poet B

Fenton Johnson Fenton 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 73% Poems 86% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Benjamin Griffith Brawley

22 April 1882 – 1 February 1939 (~57)
2 live poems · English

Benjamin Griffith Brawley entered the world on April 22, 1882, in Columbia, South Carolina, during a time when the South was still grappling with the aftershocks of Reconstruction and the hardening grip of Jim Crow. The second eldest of nine children born to the Reverend Edward McKnight Brawley and Margaret Saphronia Dickerson Brawley, he grew up in a household that prized education, faith, and quiet dignity amid rac…

“Literature should be not only history but prophecy, not only the record of our striving but also the mirror of our hopes and dreams. The Negro himself is the supreme challenge to American literature.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Fenton Johnson

Fenton Johnson

7 May 1888 – 17 September 1958 (~70)
2 live poems · English

In the sunlit streets of late-19th-century Chicago, where the Great Lakes breezes carried the promise of industry and the distant echoes of Southern migrations, Fenton Johnson entered the world on May 7, 1888. He would leave it on September 17, 1958, in the same city that had cradled his ambitions and tested his spirit, his seventy years a testament to the restless genius of an artist who refused to be confined by th…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Fenton Johnson
1882 1958
They overlapped for 52 years (1888–1939). When Fenton Johnson was born, Benjamin Griffith Brawley was about 6. Fenton Johnson was about 51 when Benjamin Griffith Brawley died.
Benjamin Griffith Brawley in history Fenton Johnson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,048 km separate Columbia, South Carolina, USA from Chicago, Illinois, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Fenton Johnson

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 racial love life

Benjamin Griffith Brawley only

fields history violence

Fenton Johnson only

tired chicago civilization despair voice african declaration creation social

From the biographies

Benjamin Griffith Brawley: columbia, south carolina, edward mcknight brawley, morehouse college, the atheneum, a prayer, the slaver, freedom on the free, the education. Fenton Johnson: chicago, harlem renaissance, elijah johnson, jesse taylor johnson, a little dreaming, visions of the dusk, songs of the soil, tired.

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 Plan
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
79% world, racial, love, life
Compare
Declaration
Fenton Johnson
The Peon's Child
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
79%
Compare
Tired
Fenton Johnson
The Peon's Child
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
74% world
Compare
Declaration
Fenton Johnson
The Plan
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
72% racial
Compare
Tired
Fenton Johnson

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

Benjamin Griffith Brawley

1895 Early Education in Petersburg
1904 Graduation from Howard University
1906 Marriage to Mary E. Brawley
1919 Publication of 'The Negro in Literature and Art'
1920 Founding of the Atlanta University Press
1930 Publication of 'A History of the Negro in America'
1935 Publication of 'The Poetry of the Negro'
1939 Death of Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Fenton Johnson

1900 First Publication of Poem by Fenton Johnson
1918 Publication of 'The Heart of a Woman'
1920 Editorial Role at the Chicago Defender
1930 Publication of 'Black Manhattan'
1935 Friendship with Langston Hughes
1940 Publication of 'The Negro in Chicago'
1945 Involvement in the Chicago Black Renaissance
1950 Publication of 'The Complete Poems of Fenton Johnson'

Emotional landscapes

Benjamin Griffith Brawley: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing. Fenton Johnson: Sorrow, Despair, Peace.

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