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

Edwin Arlington Robinson Edwin Arlington Robinson

Poet B

John Crowe Ransom John Crowe Ransom
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 88% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson

22 December 1869 – 6 April 1935 (~66)
10 live poems · English

Edwin Arlington Robinson stands as one of the most distinctive and influential voices in American poetry. Renowned for his psychologically nuanced portraits, precise craftsmanship, and unflinching explorations of the human condition, Robinson’s work bridges the 19th and 20th centuries, offering both the rigor of tradition and the insights of modernity. His journey from the small towns of Maine to the literary heights…

“To be ambitious of becoming a great man is the first step towards becoming a little man.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom

30 April 1888 – 3 July 1974 (~86)
4 live poems · English

John Crowe Ransom stood at the crossroads of American poetry and criticism in the twentieth century, a figure whose influence extended far beyond the elegant verses he composed. Born on April 30, 1888, in Pulaski, Tennessee, he would become the architect of a critical revolution, the mentor to some of America's finest poets, and the principal voice of a distinctly Southern literary aesthetic that sought to reconcile…

“The department of English is charged with the understanding and the communication of literature, an art, yet it has usually forgotten to inquire into the peculiar constitution and structure of its product.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Edwin Arlington Robinson
John Crowe Ransom
1869 1974
They overlapped for 48 years (1888–1935). When John Crowe Ransom was born, Edwin Arlington Robinson was about 19. John Crowe Ransom was about 47 when Edwin Arlington Robinson died.
Edwin Arlington Robinson in history John Crowe Ransom in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,784 km separate Head Tide, Maine, USA from Pulaski, Tennessee, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

John Crowe Ransom

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 death

Edwin Arlington Robinson only

social self dead happiness limits enduring clerks humanity philosophical ordinary shop recognition

John Crowe Ransom only

world woman beauty bells body girl daughter lady fever lace cold illness

From the biographies

Edwin Arlington Robinson: head tide maine, gardiner maine, tilbury town, the torrent and the night before, the children of the night, richard cory, miniver cheevy, the man against the sky. John Crowe Ransom: pulaski, tennessee, john james ransom, ella crowe ransom, vanderbilt university, fugitive group, the fugitive, allen tate, robert penn warren.

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.

Exit
Edwin Arlington Robinson
80% death
Compare
Here Lies a Lady
John Crowe Ransom
Exit
Edwin Arlington Robinson
79%
Compare
Features of Creatures
John Crowe Ransom
Another Dark Lady
Edwin Arlington Robinson
77%
Compare
Features of Creatures
John Crowe Ransom
Another Dark Lady
Edwin Arlington Robinson
77% woman, beauty
Compare
Here Lies a Lady
John Crowe Ransom
Another Dark Lady
Edwin Arlington Robinson
76% woman, beauty
Compare
Her Eyes
John Crowe Ransom
Exit
Edwin Arlington Robinson
76% death
Compare
Bells for John Whitesides' Daughter
John Crowe Ransom

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks

Edwin Arlington Robinson

1891 Robinson's Enrollment at Harvard University
1896 Publication of First Book, 'The Torrent and the Nightingale'
1897 Publication of 'Children of the Night'
1897 Publication of 'The Children of the Night'
1904 Publication of 'The Man Who Died'
1921 Robinson's First Pulitzer Prize
1922 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1928 Robinson's Second Pulitzer Prize

John Crowe Ransom

1909 Education at Vanderbilt University
1910 Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford
1913 Marriage to Margaret E. McKinney
1925 Publication of 'Chasing the Green Lion'
1930 Involvement with the Southern Agrarians
1938 Publication of 'The World's Body'
1939 Founding of the Kenyon Review
1941 Publication of 'The New Criticism'

Emotional landscapes

Edwin Arlington Robinson: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. John Crowe Ransom: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.

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