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

Stephen Crane Stephen Crane

Poet B

Anna Hempstead Branch Anna Hempstead Branch
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 58% Poems 80% Blended 68%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane

1 November 1871 – 5 June 1900 (~29)
3 live poems · English

Stephen Crane, born 1 November 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, and dead of tuberculosis on 5 June 1900 in Badenweiler, Germany, lived only twenty-eight years, yet his work altered the direction of American fiction, journalism, and poetry. He is commonly placed among the major writers of literary naturalism, beside such figures as Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, but the label only partly contains him. Crane was at once…

“Personally I am aware that my work does not amount to a string of dried beans—I always calmly admit it. But I also know that I do the best that is in me, without regard to cheers or damnation.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
Anna Hempstead Branch

Anna Hempstead Branch

18 March 1875 – 8 September 1937 (~62)
2 live poems · English

On March 18, 1875, in the historic Hempstead House in New London, Connecticut, Anna Hempstead Branch was born into a world of deep New England roots and literary tradition. The younger of two children, she arrived into a family where words mattered, where literature breathed through the rooms of an ancestral home that had sheltered Hempsteads since 1640. Her father, John Locke Branch, practiced law with quiet distinc…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Despair, Wonder

In time

Stephen Crane
Anna Hempstead Branch
1871 1937
They overlapped for 26 years (1875–1900). When Anna Hempstead Branch was born, Stephen Crane was about 4. Anna Hempstead Branch was about 25 when Stephen Crane died.

On the map

About 187 km separate Newark, New Jersey, USA from New London, Connecticut, 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.

From the biographies

social urban

Stephen Crane: newark, new jersey, badenweiler, the red badge of courage, maggie: a girl of the streets, literary naturalism, frank norris, theodore dreiser. Anna Hempstead Branch: new london, connecticut, john locke branch, mary lydia bolles branch, the road 'twixt heaven and hell, heart of the road, the shoes that danced, rose of the wind.

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.

A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
74%
Compare
Am I a prisoner?
Anna Hempstead Branch
I met a seer
Stephen Crane
70%
Compare
I say that words are men and when we spell
Anna Hempstead Branch
I met a seer
Stephen Crane
70%
Compare
Am I a prisoner?
Anna Hempstead Branch
War Is Kind
Stephen Crane
65%
Compare
I say that words are men and when we spell
Anna Hempstead Branch
War Is Kind
Stephen Crane
61%
Compare
Am I a prisoner?
Anna Hempstead Branch

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Stephen Crane: Irony, Sorrow, Despair. Anna Hempstead Branch: Fear, Despair, Wonder.

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