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

Alfred Kreymborg Alfred Kreymborg

Poet B

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy
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% Poems 80% Blended 68%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Kreymborg

Alfred Kreymborg

10 December 1883 – 14 August 1966 (~83)
2 live poems · English

In the early decades of the twentieth century, when American poetry was struggling to break free from the strictures of Victorian convention, a slight, chess-obsessed son of German immigrants emerged as one of the most influential figures in literary modernism. Alfred Kreymborg, born on December 10, 1883, in New York City, would become far more than a poet. He was a literary impresario, a talent scout with an uncanny…

“Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that the people who really enjoy chess are the dubs and the duffers, experts who have resigned their ambitions, those who play only for pastime, and, of course, the great fraternity of the kibbitzers.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928 (~88)
41 live poems · English

Thomas Hardy stands as one of the most significant literary figures of the Victorian and early modern periods, a writer whose novels explored the tragic dimensions of human experience with unflinching honesty and whose poetry achieved a stark beauty that influenced generations of twentieth-century poets. Born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England, and dying on January 11, 1928, in Max Gate, Dorchest…

“I have always been impressed by the fact that the great things of life are often done by people who are not great.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Alfred Kreymborg
Thomas Hardy
1840 1966
They overlapped for 46 years (1883–1928). When Alfred Kreymborg was born, Thomas Hardy was about 43. Alfred Kreymborg was about 45 when Thomas Hardy died.
Alfred Kreymborg in history Thomas Hardy in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,446 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Alfred Kreymborg

Thomas Hardy

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 life self

Alfred Kreymborg only

play prodigy dignity idealism stream dream tree bird

Thomas Hardy only

memory death love woman social past landscape dead rural rain suffering military

From the biographies

Alfred Kreymborg: new york city, german immigrants, greenwich village, alfred stieglitz, the glebe, des imagistes, imagism, others: a magazine of the new verse. Thomas Hardy: higher bockhampton, dorset, egdon heath, emma lavinia gifford, far from the madding crowd, the return of the native, the mayor of casterbridge, tess of the d'urbervilles.

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.

Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
79% world, life
Compare
To an Unborn Pauper Child
Thomas Hardy
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
77% world
Compare
The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
76% bird, world
Compare
The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
75% life
Compare
The Ruined Maid
Thomas Hardy
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
72% life
Compare
Beeny Cliff
Thomas Hardy
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
72%
Compare
Hap
Thomas Hardy

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom

Alfred Kreymborg

1900 Kreymborg's Musical Education
1914 Publication of 'The Little Review'
1915 Founding of 'Others' Magazine
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry' Anthology
1920 Kreymborg's Friendship with William Carlos Williams
1920 Publication of 'The New York Times' Poetry Section
1945 Kreymborg's Involvement with the New American Poetry

Thomas Hardy

1857 Hardy's Friendship with Horace Moule Begins
1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall
1873 Horace Moule Commits Suicide
1874 Hardy Marries Emma Gifford in London
1885 Hardy Moves into Max Gate, His Self-Designed Home
1895 Publication of Jude the Obscure, Hardy's Final Novel
1912 Hardy's First Wife Emma Dies at Max Gate
1928 Hardy's Heart Buried with Emma, Ashes in Westminster Abbey

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Thomas Hardy: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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