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

Theodore Henry Shackelford Theodore Henry Shackelford
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 78% Blended 75%
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
Theodore Henry Shackelford

Theodore Henry Shackelford

29 May 1887 – 5 February 1923 (~36)
2 live poems · English

Theodore Henry Shackelford entered the world on May 29, 1887, in the small community of Essex, in Essex County, Ontario, Canada—just a stone’s throw from the bustling border town of Windsor. The air there carried the crisp bite of Lake Erie’s winds, and the landscape, though far from the cotton fields of the American South, still echoed with the stories of Black families who had found refuge in Canada via the Undergr…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace

In time

Robert Nathaniel Dett
Theodore Henry Shackelford
1882 1943
They overlapped for 37 years (1887–1923). When Theodore Henry Shackelford was born, Robert Nathaniel Dett was about 5. Robert Nathaniel Dett was about 41 when Theodore Henry Shackelford died.

On the map

About 306 km separate Drummondville, Ontario, Canada from Essex, Ontario, Canada. Both have ground in Ontario.

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

Robert Nathaniel Dett: drummondville, niagara falls, battle creek, the album of a heart, after the cakewalk, listen to the lambs, hampton institute, antonín dvořák. Theodore Henry Shackelford: essex county, ontario, mammy’s cracklin’ bread, my country, paul laurence dunbar, new negro movement, sojourner truth home, colored orphanage.

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
73%
Compare
Mammy's Cracklin' Bread
Theodore Henry Shackelford
Yield but thy love to me
Robert Nathaniel Dett
70%
Compare
Commencement
Theodore Henry Shackelford
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
67% tradition
Compare
Commencement
Theodore Henry Shackelford
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
66% tradition
Compare
Mammy's Cracklin' Bread
Theodore Henry Shackelford
The Rubinstein Staccato Etude
Robert Nathaniel Dett
60%
Compare
Mammy's Cracklin' Bread
Theodore Henry Shackelford
The Rubinstein Staccato Etude
Robert Nathaniel Dett
57%
Compare
Commencement
Theodore Henry Shackelford

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Robert Nathaniel Dett: Tenderness, Joy, Longing. Theodore Henry Shackelford: Joy, Tenderness, Peace.

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