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

Robert Nathaniel Dett Robert Nathaniel Dett

Poet B

Countee Cullen Countee Cullen
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 69% Poems 85% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Nathaniel Dett

Robert Nathaniel Dett

11 October 1882 – 2 October 1943 (~61)
3 live poems · English

Robert Nathaniel Dett entered the world on October 11, 1882, in the small village of Drummondville, Ontario—now absorbed into the bustling splendor of Niagara Falls, Canada—amid the roar of one of nature’s most awe-inspiring wonders. He left it on October 2, 1943, at the age of sixty, felled by a heart attack in Battle Creek, Michigan, while tirelessly touring with a USO chorus to lift the spirits of troops during Wo…

“Suddenly it seemed I heard again the frail voice of my long departed grandmother calling across the years; and in a rush of emotion which stirred my spirit to its very center, the meaning of the songs which had given her soul such peace was revealed to me.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen

30 May 1903 – 9 January 1946 (~43)
4 live poems · English

On May 30, 1903, a child was born who would become one of the most celebrated voices of the Harlem Renaissance, yet whose origins remain shrouded in the kind of mystery that seems almost poetic in retrospect. Countee Cullen's exact birthplace has been disputed—some records suggest New York City, others Louisville, Kentucky, and still others Baltimore, Maryland. This uncertainty about his origins would prove oddly fit…

“Good poetry is a lofty thought beautifully expressed. Poetry should not be too intellectual. It should deal more, I think, with the emotions. The highest type of poem is that which warmly stirs the emotions, which awakens a responsive chord in the human heart.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Robert Nathaniel Dett
Countee Cullen
1882 1946
They overlapped for 41 years (1903–1943). When Countee Cullen was born, Robert Nathaniel Dett was about 21. Countee Cullen was about 40 when Robert Nathaniel Dett died.
Robert Nathaniel Dett in history Countee Cullen in history Years they were given

On the map

About 800 km separate Drummondville, Ontario, Canada from Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Robert Nathaniel Dett

Countee Cullen

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Robert Nathaniel Dett only

music love staccato etude rubinstein laughter piano sound spiritual heart conjured folk

Countee Cullen only

racial world divine suffering social boys children tableau thunder lightning beauty spring

From the biographies

african

Robert Nathaniel Dett: drummondville, niagara falls, battle creek, the album of a heart, after the cakewalk, listen to the lambs, hampton institute, antonín dvořák. Countee Cullen: harlem renaissance, new york city, w.e.b. du bois, color, yet do i marvel, incident, copper sun, the ballad of the brown girl.

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.

Yield but thy love to me
Robert Nathaniel Dett
77%
Compare
Yet Do I Marvel
Countee Cullen
Yield but thy love to me
Robert Nathaniel Dett
77%
Compare
To John Keats, Poet at Spring Time
Countee Cullen
Yield but thy love to me
Robert Nathaniel Dett
75%
Compare
Any Human to Another
Countee Cullen
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
73%
Compare
Yet Do I Marvel
Countee Cullen
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
70%
Compare
Any Human to Another
Countee Cullen
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
67%
Compare
To John Keats, Poet at Spring Time
Countee Cullen

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1903 Publication of 'The Souls of Black Folk'
1903 Wright Brothers Achieve First Powered Flight Using Wind Tunnel Research
1906 Appointment as editor of Punch
1906 Publication of The Highwayman
1906 Upton Sinclair Publishes 'The Jungle'
1907 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
1908 Discovery of Oil at Masjid i-Sulaiman in Persia

Robert Nathaniel Dett

1907 Education at the Oberlin Conservatory
1911 Publication of 'The Album of a Heart'
1913 Dett Joins the Faculty of Hampton Institute
1919 Founding of the National Association of Negro Musicians
1930 Choral Directorship at Hampton Institute
1937 Premiere of the Oratorio 'The Ordering of Moses'
1942 Touring with the USO during WWII
1943 Recognition by the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Countee Cullen

1910 Countee Cullen's Adoption by Reverend Cullen
1920 Countee Cullen's Friendship with Langston Hughes
1925 Countee Cullen Graduates from New York University
1925 Countee Cullen's First Major Poetry Collection Published
1926 Cullen joins Opportunity and begins The Dark Tower
1926 Cullen takes a master’s degree at Harvard
1927 Cullen edits the anthology Caroling Dusk
1928 Countee Cullen Marries Yolande Du Bois

Emotional landscapes

Robert Nathaniel Dett: Tenderness, Joy, Longing. Countee Cullen: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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