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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

Conrad Aiken Conrad Aiken

Poet B

Trumbull Stickney Trumbull Stickney
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 70% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
Conrad Aiken

Conrad Aiken

5 August 1889 – 17 August 1973 (~84)
1 live poem · English

The story of Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) reads like something from a Gothic novel, yet it is the true foundation upon which one of twentieth-century America's most psychologically complex poets built his life and work. Born into comfortable circumstances in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken seemed destined for the privileged life his family background suggested. His father, William Ford Aiken, had s…

“Fortunately, aesthetic judgment is not entirely solipsistic, but is in part guided by certain aesthetic laws, vague but none the less usable.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
Trumbull Stickney

Trumbull Stickney

20 June 1874 – 11 October 1904 (~30)
2 live poems · English

Joseph Trumbull Stickney, known almost always as Trumbull Stickney, was born on 20 June 1874 in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Boston on 11 October 1904. His brief life, ending when he was only thirty, has encouraged the familiar image of the doomed young poet whose promise exceeds his surviving achievement. That image is not wholly wrong, but it is too simple. Stickney was not merely a promising lyricist interrupt…

“There's nothing to get out of life; there are ways to live it.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing

In time

Conrad Aiken
Trumbull Stickney
1874 1973
They overlapped for 16 years (1889–1904). When Conrad Aiken was born, Trumbull Stickney was about 15. Conrad Aiken was about 15 when Trumbull Stickney died.

On the map

About 7,305 km separate Savannah, Georgia, USA from Geneva, Switzerland. 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.

Shared

Conrad Aiken only

Trumbull Stickney only

From the biographies

george santayana memory

Conrad Aiken: savannah, georgia, william ford aiken, anna potter aiken, ushant, the charnel rose, the jig of forslin, the house of dust, senlin: a biography. Trumbull Stickney: geneva, boston, harvard college, william vaughn moody, george santayana, dramatic lyrics, greek tragedy, american school of classical studies.

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.

Music I Heard
Conrad Aiken
76% memory, world, heart
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
Music I Heard
Conrad Aiken
75% presence, world
Compare
Live blindly and upon the hour
Trumbull Stickney

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Conrad Aiken: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness. Trumbull Stickney: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

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