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

Anne Whitney Anne Whitney

Poet B

Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay
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 60% Poems 87% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
Anne Whitney

Anne Whitney

2 September 1821 – 23 January 1915 (~94)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of 19th-century American artists, few figures embody the spirit of creative rebellion and social conscience as powerfully as Anne Whitney. Born into an era when women were expected to confine their artistic pursuits to watercolors and embroidery, Whitney defied convention to become one of America's most accomplished sculptors and a significant voice in poetry. Her ninety-four years spanned a transform…

“Were we to rate every friend's - sister's or brother's - idiosyncracies at the height of the second dispensation or even of that of Moses & the prophets our skirts should be of asbestos to save us from the reflex of our judicial fires.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Irony
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950 (~58)
100 live poems · English

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22 February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, and died on 19 October 1950 at her home in Austerlitz, New York. During her lifetime she became one of the most visible and commercially successful poets in the United States: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a celebrated public reader, a playwright, a lyricist, a political writer, and an emblem of the modern, sexually independent “New Woman.” Her fame…

“The poet is not a man who says what he thinks, but a man who says what he feels.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Anne Whitney
Edna St. Vincent Millay
1821 1950
They overlapped for 24 years (1892–1915). When Edna St. Vincent Millay was born, Anne Whitney was about 71. Edna St. Vincent Millay was about 23 when Anne Whitney died.
Anne Whitney in history Edna St. Vincent Millay in history Years they were given

On the map

About 256 km separate Watertown, Massachusetts, USA from Rockland, Maine, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Anne Whitney

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

life death pain

Anne Whitney only

grave digger burial laughter mortality social dreaming awake dream divine flower spiritual

Edna St. Vincent Millay only

world love self desire beloved beauty nature grief women memory woman heart

From the biographies

women

Anne Whitney: watertown, massachusetts, james monroe, civil war, abolition, women's rights, the lone parting, equinoxial, ethiopia. Edna St. Vincent Millay: rockland, maine, austerlitz, new york, pulitzer prize, renascence, caroline b. dow, vassar college, greenwich village, a few figs from thistles.

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.

Half Awake
Anne Whitney
80% dream
Compare
The Dream
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
80% life
Compare
Ashes of Life
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
76% life
Compare
Wild Swans
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
76% life
Compare
Spring
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Grave-Digger
Anne Whitney
76% death
Compare
Dirge
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
76%
Compare
The Philosopher
Edna St. Vincent Millay

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks
1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'

Anne Whitney

1837 Education at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary
1850 Move to Boston
1854 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1869 Involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement
1880 Creation of the Statue of Samuel Adams
1885 Travel to Europe for Artistic Inspiration
1890 Publication of 'The Poems of Anne Whitney'
1915 Death of Anne Whitney

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1907 Publication of 'Renascence' and Early Recognition
1913 Matriculation at Vassar College
1917 Graduation from Vassar College
1917 Move to Greenwich Village
1917 Publication of 'Renascence and Other Poems'
1923 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1923 Publication of 'The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems'
1936 Car Accident Causing Chronic Pain and Leading to Drug Dependency (1936)

Emotional landscapes

Anne Whitney: Sorrow, Spirituality, Irony. Edna St. Vincent Millay: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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