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

Jean Toomer Jean Toomer

Poet B

Waverley Turner Carmichael Waverley Turner Carmichael
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 66% Blended 66%
Swap sides Another related pair
Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer

26 December 1894 – 30 March 1967 (~73)
1 live poem · English

On December 26, 1894, in Washington, D.C., Nathan Pinchback Toomer was born into a world of racial complexity that would profoundly shape his literary vision and personal identity. Known to history as Jean Toomer, this enigmatic figure would produce one of the most celebrated works of the Harlem Renaissance before retreating into relative obscurity, leaving behind a legacy as puzzling as it is profound. His life stor…

“I am of no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Modernist Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Sorrow
Waverley Turner Carmichael

Waverley Turner Carmichael

1881 – 1936 (~55)
1 live poem · English

Waverley Turner Carmichael emerged from the red clay of Alabama’s Black Belt like a quiet song rising unbidden from the soil itself. Born in 1881 in the small community of Snow Hill, in Wilcox County, he would become one of the most authentic voices of rural African American life in the early twentieth century. His poetry, written in the rich dialect of the Southern Black folk he knew so intimately, captured the humo…

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

In time

Jean Toomer
Waverley Turner Carmichael
1881 1967
They overlapped for 43 years (1894–1936). When Jean Toomer was born, Waverley Turner Carmichael was about 13. Jean Toomer was about 42 when Waverley Turner Carmichael died.

On the map

About 1,183 km separate Washington, D.C., USA from Snow Hill, Wilcox County, Alabama, USA. Shared ground: United States.

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.

Jean Toomer only

Waverley Turner Carmichael only

From the biographies

folk

Jean Toomer: washington d.c., harlem renaissance, sparta, georgia, pinckback benton stewart pinchback, nina pinchback toomer, karenitha, cotton song, reapers. Waverley Turner Carmichael: alabama, snow hill, black belt, from the heart of a folk, james holly hanford, 92nd infantry division, buffaloes, world war i.

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.

Karintha
Jean Toomer
67%
Compare
Mammy's Baby Scared
Waverley Turner Carmichael

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Jean Toomer: Longing, Sensuality, Sorrow. Waverley Turner Carmichael: Tenderness, Peace, Fear.

Skip to main content