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

Grace Hazard Conkling Grace Hazard Conkling

Poet B

Genevieve Taggard Genevieve Taggard
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 74% Poems 80% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Grace Hazard Conkling

Grace Hazard Conkling

7 February 1878 – 15 November 1958 (~80)
2 live poems · English

Grace Hazard Conkling, born Grace Walcott Hazard in New York City on 7 February 1878, belonged to a generation of American women whose intellectual ambitions were increasingly supported by women’s colleges, international study, and new professional opportunities, even as marriage and motherhood still imposed demanding social expectations. She became a poet, teacher, musician, critic of children’s reading, and a forma…

“What is it people lose when they grow up? Simplicity and insight. They get wise with so many little details called facts that they lose the broad view. It's like getting into a fog.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Sensuality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Genevieve Taggard

Genevieve Taggard

28 November 1894 – 8 November 1948 (~54)
3 live poems · English

Genevieve Taggard was born on November 28, 1894, in the small farming community of Waitsburg, Washington, a place of dust-choked fields and modest wooden houses that would later stand in stark contrast to the lush paradise of her childhood memories. She died on November 8, 1948, in a New York City hospital, just shy of her fifty-fourth birthday, her body worn down by chronic hypertension that had increasingly confine…

“Self-sufficiency is a myth, of course, but after thirty, if one is a serious-minded egoist (i.e., artist) it becomes more and more necessary.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Grace Hazard Conkling
Genevieve Taggard
1878 1958
They overlapped for 55 years (1894–1948). When Genevieve Taggard was born, Grace Hazard Conkling was about 16. Grace Hazard Conkling was about 70 when Genevieve Taggard died.
Grace Hazard Conkling in history Genevieve Taggard in history Years they were given

On the map

About 3,567 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Waitsburg, Washington, USA. Both have ground in New York City and New York.

Grace Hazard Conkling

Genevieve Taggard

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

dancer grace life

Grace Hazard Conkling only

world flamenco spain performer tormented pain python animal snake fear beauty danger

Genevieve Taggard only

woman city social failure memory detail clock hawaiian hula hawaii gaze lane

From the biographies

new york city

Grace Hazard Conkling: new york city, smith college, hilda conkling, symphony of a mexican garden, wilderness songs, roscoe platt conkling, tampico, charles-marie widor. Genevieve Taggard: waitsburg, washington, honolulu, hawaii, robert l. wolf, marcia liles, for eager lovers, hawaiian hilltop, travelling standing still, the life and mind of emily dickinson.

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.

Andaluza
Grace Hazard Conkling
71% dancer, grace
Compare
The Tourist
Genevieve Taggard
Andaluza
Grace Hazard Conkling
68%
Compare
Portygee Lovesong
Genevieve Taggard
Python
Grace Hazard Conkling
68%
Compare
Portygee Lovesong
Genevieve Taggard
Python
Grace Hazard Conkling
65% life
Compare
Detail
Genevieve Taggard
Python
Grace Hazard Conkling
65%
Compare
The Tourist
Genevieve Taggard
Andaluza
Grace Hazard Conkling
62%
Compare
Detail
Genevieve Taggard

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks
1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'
1895 The X-Ray Discovery
1896 Publication of 'A Shropshire Lad'
1896 Publication of 'The Story of the Other Wise Man'
1897 J.J. Thomson discovers the electron at the Cavendish Laboratory
1897 Ronald Ross Demonstrates Mosquito Transmission of Malaria

Grace Hazard Conkling

1899 Education at Smith College
1899 Teaching Career Begins
1900 Study in Europe
1904 Marriage to William Conkling
1920 Publication of 'The Wind and the Rain'
1924 Publication of 'The House of the Seven Gables'

Genevieve Taggard

1896 Taggard Family Relocation to Hawaii
1921 Taggard Co‑Founds The Measure: A Journal of Poetry
1922 Taggard Publishes First Poetry Collection, For Eager Lovers
1925 Publication of First Poetry Collection
1926 Taggard Publishes Words for the Chisel
1930 Taggard Publishes The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson
1931 Taggard Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship, Travels to Majorca and Capri
1935 Involvement in Labor Activism

Emotional landscapes

Grace Hazard Conkling: Wonder, Sensuality, Longing. Genevieve Taggard: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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