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

Richard Aldington Richard Aldington
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 67% Poems 76% Blended 71%
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
Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington

8 July 1892 – 27 July 1962 (~70)
3 live poems · English

In the tumultuous landscape of early twentieth-century literature, few figures embodied the era's contradictions and transformations as completely as Richard Aldington. Born Edward Godfree Aldington on July 8, 1892, in Portsmouth, Hampshire, he would emerge as one of the founding voices of literary modernism, only to spend his later years railing against the very movement he helped create. His life trajectory—from pr…

“Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Alfred Kreymborg
Richard Aldington
1883 1966
They overlapped for 71 years (1892–1962). When Richard Aldington was born, Alfred Kreymborg was about 9. Alfred Kreymborg was about 79 when Richard Aldington died.

On the map

About 5,534 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

Alfred Kreymborg: new york city, german immigrants, greenwich village, alfred stieglitz, the glebe, des imagistes, imagism, others: a magazine of the new verse. Richard Aldington: portsmouth, ezra pound, h.d., imagist movement, evening, the poplar, images of war, bombardment.

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.

Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
71% world
Compare
A Village
Richard Aldington
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
70% world
Compare
A Village
Richard Aldington
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
68%
Compare
E. T.
Richard Aldington
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
67%
Compare
E. T.
Richard Aldington
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
62% world
Compare
Bombardment
Richard Aldington
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
60% world
Compare
Bombardment
Richard Aldington

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Richard Aldington: Peace, Sorrow, Despair.

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