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.

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

Anne Spencer Anne Spencer

Poet B

Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson
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 70% Poems 89% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Anne Spencer

Anne Spencer

6 February 1882 – 27 July 1975 (~93)
3 live poems · English

Anne Spencer was a poet whose verses captured the quiet fire of resilience, the lush beauty of the natural world, and the sharp edges of racial and gender injustice in early twentieth-century America. Born in the rolling farmlands of Virginia at a time when the shadow of slavery still lingered over Black lives, she forged a literary legacy that transcended her geographic isolation from the bustling heart of the Harle…

“I answered every letter I ever received, though at times—too many times—that answer did not get on the paper or in the mail.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886 (~56)
185 live poems · English

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…

“My friends are my estate.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Anne Spencer
Emily Dickinson
1830 1975
They overlapped for 5 years (1882–1886). When Anne Spencer was born, Emily Dickinson was about 52. Anne Spencer was about 4 when Emily Dickinson died.
Anne Spencer in history Emily Dickinson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 897 km separate Henry County, Virginia, USA from Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Anne Spencer

Emily Dickinson

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 love soul

Anne Spencer only

heart woman wife harlem stars silence friend travelers prayer harmony peace earth

Emily Dickinson only

death nature self divine spiritual suffering religious social pain bird desire heaven

From the biographies

Anne Spencer: lynchburg, danville, edward alexander spencer, the crisis, before the feast of shushan, white things, lady lady, the wife-woman. Emily Dickinson: amherst, massachusetts, edward dickinson, susan gilbert, because i could not stop for death, fascicles, mount holyoke female seminary, civil war.

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 Wife-Woman
Anne Spencer
82% wife, life
Compare
The Wife
Emily Dickinson
Translation
Anne Spencer
80% world
Compare
Psalm of the Day
Emily Dickinson
The Wife-Woman
Anne Spencer
80% life
Compare
He ate and drank the precious Words
Emily Dickinson
The Wife-Woman
Anne Spencer
78% love, life
Compare
In Vain
Emily Dickinson
Requiem
Anne Spencer
78% death, world, life
Compare
It was not Death, for I stood up
Emily Dickinson
Requiem
Anne Spencer
78% world, life
Compare
New feet within my garden go
Emily Dickinson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
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

Anne Spencer

1901 Marriage to Edward Spencer
1910 Annie Bethel Scales Bannister's Name Change
1919 Involvement with the NAACP
1920 Publication of 'In the Garden'
1923 Publication of 'The Black Flower'
1923 Publication of 'The Cone' in 'The Crisis'
1926 Friendship with Langston Hughes
1940 Founding of the Lynchburg Chapter of the NAACP

Emily Dickinson

1840 Emily Dickinson Enters Amherst Academy
1844 Death of Second Cousin Sophia Holland
1847 Religious Crisis and 'No-Hoper' Status at Mount Holyoke
1855 First and Only Extended Journey: Washington and Philadelphia
1858 Beginning of Fascicle-Making: Formal Copying of Poems
1862 Emily Dickinson Begins Corresponding with Thomas Wentworth Higginson
1886 Discovery and Initial Editing of Poems Posthumously
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia

Emotional landscapes

Anne Spencer: Spirituality, Sorrow, Longing. Emily Dickinson: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

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