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

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens

Poet B

Howard Phelps Putnam Howard Phelps Putnam
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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 73% Poems 87% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

2 October 1879 – 2 August 1955 (~76)
8 live poems · English

Wallace Stevens stands as one of the most enigmatic and profound voices in American poetry—a philosophical poet who balanced a successful corporate career with the creation of some of the most intellectually challenging and aesthetically innovative verse of the 20th century. His poetry, characterized by its luxuriant language, philosophical depth, and preoccupation with the imagination's relationship to reality, cont…

“To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow
Howard Phelps Putnam

Howard Phelps Putnam

1894 – 3 July 1948 (~54)
2 live poems · English

Howard Phelps Putnam was born in 1894 in Allston, Massachusetts, then a distinctly suburban and semi-rural part of Boston, and died on July 3, 1948, in Jamaica Plain. He belonged to the generation of American writers formed between the confident cultural inheritance of the nineteenth century and the disillusioning modernity of the First World War. His reputation never became as large as those of several Yale contempo…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Fear

In time

Wallace Stevens
Howard Phelps Putnam
1879 1955
They overlapped for 55 years (1894–1948). When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Wallace Stevens was about 15. Wallace Stevens was about 69 when Howard Phelps Putnam died.

On the map

About 465 km separate Reading, Pennsylvania, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, 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.

Shared

From the biographies

Wallace Stevens: reading, pennsylvania, harvard university, george santayana, harmonium, sunday morning, the emperor of ice-cream, thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, the snow man. Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét.

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.

Another Weeping Woman
Wallace Stevens
80% woman
Compare
One Woman
Howard Phelps Putnam
Re-statement of Romance
Wallace Stevens
79% self
Compare
One Woman
Howard Phelps Putnam
Invective Against Swans
Wallace Stevens
73%
Compare
I Am an Atheist
Howard Phelps Putnam
The Death of a Soldier
Wallace Stevens
73%
Compare
I Am an Atheist
Howard Phelps Putnam
Palace of the Babies
Wallace Stevens
72%
Compare
I Am an Atheist
Howard Phelps Putnam
Re-statement of Romance
Wallace Stevens
71%
Compare
I Am an Atheist
Howard Phelps Putnam

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Wallace Stevens: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow. Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear.

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