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

John Townsend Trowbridge John Townsend Trowbridge

Poet B

Marsden Hartley Marsden Hartley
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.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 54% Blended 54%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Townsend Trowbridge

John Townsend Trowbridge

18 September 1827 – 12 February 1916 (~89)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of nineteenth-century American letters, John Townsend Trowbridge occupies a curious position—neither forgotten nor fully remembered, a writer whose prolific output and genuine popularity during his lifetime have faded into the scholarly margins, yet whose contribution to American literature, particularly children's and young adult fiction, deserves far greater recognition than it typically receives. B…

“I still go back occasionally to the old Leaves of Grass and find in them the same unfailing freshness and power, which repeated readings in no wise dull to the sense—a test which only master studies in literature can stand.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Anger
Listen Timeline Affinities
Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley

4 January 1877 – 2 September 1943 (~66)
1 live poem · English

Marsden Hartley stands as one of the most fascinating yet often overlooked figures in American modernism—a man who moved between painting and poetry with equal fervor, whose work captured the raw, untamed spirit of early twentieth-century artistic experimentation. Though primarily remembered as a visual artist, Hartley's literary output reveals a sensibility equally attuned to the power of words as to the force of co…

“I could never be French, I could never become German – I shall always remain American – the essence which is in me is American mysticism.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Townsend Trowbridge
Marsden Hartley
1827 1943
They overlapped for 40 years (1877–1916). When Marsden Hartley was born, John Townsend Trowbridge was about 50. Marsden Hartley was about 39 when John Townsend Trowbridge died.
John Townsend Trowbridge in history Marsden Hartley in history Years they were given

On the map

About 621 km separate Ogden, New York, USA from Lewiston, Maine, USA. Shared ground: United States.

John Townsend Trowbridge

Marsden Hartley

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

beauty

John Townsend Trowbridge only

wolves social urban suffering violence door cuba island history colonial cuban redemption

Marsden Hartley only

fish world creation moon eyes damsons divine

From the biographies

John Townsend Trowbridge: ogden, new york, windsor stone trowbridge, father brighthopes, neighbor jackwood, underground railroad, the south: a tour of its battle-fields and ruined cities, jack hazard and his fortunes, doing his best books. Marsden Hartley: lewiston, maine, cleveland school of art, william merritt chase, alfred stieglitz, war motif series, karl von freyburg, twenty-five poems, androscoggin.

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.

The Wolves
John Townsend Trowbridge
63%
Compare
Fishmonger
Marsden Hartley
Cuba
John Townsend Trowbridge
61% beauty
Compare
Fishmonger
Marsden Hartley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

John Townsend Trowbridge

1844 Early Education and Literary Aspirations of Trowbridge
1850 Return to Boston and Literary Career Beginnings
1853 Marriage to Mary E. Smith
1857 Publication of 'The Old Farm Gate'
1867 Publication of 'The Vagabonds'
1870 Friendship with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1874 Publication of 'The Poet's Corner'
1880 Appointment as a Literary Editor

Marsden Hartley

1892 Family Relocation to Cleveland
1909 Move to New York City
1912 Friendship with Alfred Stieglitz
1913 First Major Exhibition in New York
1914 Loss of a Close Friend
1914 Travel to Europe
1930 Return to Maine
1937 Publication of 'The Maine Poems'

Emotional landscapes

John Townsend Trowbridge: Sorrow, Despair, Anger. Marsden Hartley: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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