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.

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

Manuel Machado Manuel Machado

Poet B

Paul Valéry Paul Valéry
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 65% Poems 78% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Manuel Machado

Manuel Machado

29 August 1874 – 19 January 1947 (~73)
4 live poems · Spanish

Manuel Machado was born on August 29, 1874, in the heart of Seville, Spain, at number 20 on San Pedro Mártir Street, into a household that pulsed with the rhythms of Andalusian folklore and intellectual curiosity. His arrival came at two-thirty in the morning, under the warm embrace of a city where orange blossoms scented the air and the distant echo of guitars hinted at the deep songs that would later infuse his poe…

“I shall go on committing Gallicisms whenever they suit me, if they make me more expressive and clear.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Longing
Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry

30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945 (~74)
3 live poems · French

In the autumn of 1871, as France was still reeling from the trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune, a child was born in the Mediterranean port town of Sète who would become one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary intellects. Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry entered the world on October 30th, in a region where the brilliant southern light seemed to sharpe…

“Someone who attacks another person without being attacked by them is, in doing so, attacking himself.”

Neighbourhood: French Symbolists, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality

In time

Manuel Machado
Paul Valéry
1871 1947
They overlapped for 72 years (1874–1945). When Manuel Machado was born, Paul Valéry was about 3. Manuel Machado was about 71 when Paul Valéry died.

On the map

About 1,057 km separate Seville, Spain from Sète, Occitanie, France. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

From the biographies

Manuel Machado: seville, andalusian folklore, antonio machado álvarez, demófilo, generation of '98, paris, paul verlaine, alma. Paul Valéry: sète, franco-prussian war, paris commune, symbolist movement, stéphane mallarmé, la jeune parque, le cimetière marin, charmes.

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.

Adelfos
Manuel Machado
76% self
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
71% beauty
Compare
La Fileuse
Paul Valéry
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
70% desire, self, love
Compare
L'Abeille
Paul Valéry
¡Viva la Virgen del Rocío!
Manuel Machado
68%
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
La caseta de feria
Manuel Machado
66%
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
Sevillanas
Manuel Machado
66%
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Manuel Machado: Joy, Sensuality, Longing. Paul Valéry: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.

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