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 Banister Tabb John Banister Tabb

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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 59% Blended 59%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Banister Tabb

John Banister Tabb

22 March 1845 – 19 November 1909 (~64)
1 live poem · English

In the world of American poetry, few figures embody such remarkable contrasts as John Banister Tabb (March 22, 1845 – November 19, 1909), a man whose life journey carried him from the battlefields of the Confederacy to the quiet halls of a Catholic seminary, from the drawing rooms of Virginia aristocracy to a prison cell where poetry first awakened in his soul. Known affectionately as "Father Tabb" throughout his lat…

“She is perhaps the best Catholic English writer, and Ruskin, whose life she wrote, calls her a great critic.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Tenderness
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 Banister Tabb
Marsden Hartley
1845 1943
They overlapped for 33 years (1877–1909). When Marsden Hartley was born, John Banister Tabb was about 32. Marsden Hartley was about 32 when John Banister Tabb died.
John Banister Tabb in history Marsden Hartley in history Years they were given

On the map

About 998 km separate Amelia County, Virginia, USA from Lewiston, Maine, USA. Shared ground: United States.

John Banister Tabb

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

world divine

John Banister Tabb only

clover nature silence leaf inquiry mystery

Marsden Hartley only

fish beauty creation moon eyes damsons

From the biographies

John Banister Tabb: the forest, father tabb, sidney lanier, catholic seminary, american civil war, blockade runner, point lookout, alfred curtis. 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.

Clover
John Banister Tabb
70% world, divine
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 Banister Tabb

1859 Tabb's Education Begins
1861 Civil War Service
1864 Imprisonment and Awakening of Poetry
1884 Ordination as a Catholic Priest
1894 First Published Poems
1900 Major Literary Recognition
1910 Posthumous Recognition

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 Banister Tabb: Wonder, Longing, Tenderness. Marsden Hartley: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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