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

Walter J. Turner Walter J. Turner

Poet B

Gwendolyn B. Bennett Gwendolyn B. Bennett
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
Walter J. Turner

Walter J. Turner

13 October 1884 – 18 November 1946 (~62)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of early twentieth-century poetry, certain names blaze with enduring brilliance while others flicker in the margins of literary history, their contributions underappreciated or nearly forgotten. Walter James Redfern Turner, born on October 13, 1884, in South Melbourne, Australia, belongs to this latter category—a poet, critic, and cultural polymath whose work once commanded the admiration of W.B. Yeat…

“I can confidently and in soberness declare that Wagner is a colossal fraud.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow
Gwendolyn B. Bennett

Gwendolyn B. Bennett

8 July 1902 – 30 May 1981 (~79)
3 live poems · English

Gwendolyn B. Bennett was a radiant force in American literature and art, a woman whose life wove together the threads of creativity, resilience, and quiet revolution during one of the most electrifying cultural awakenings in the nation's history. Born on July 8, 1902, in Giddings, Texas, and passing away on May 30, 1981, in Reading, Pennsylvania, at the age of seventy-eight, Bennett embodied the spirit of the Harlem…

“Few of us know that the art of the African Negro is the basic foundation of all the new schools of art in Europe.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

Walter J. Turner
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
1884 1981
They overlapped for 45 years (1902–1946). When Gwendolyn B. Bennett was born, Walter J. Turner was about 18. Gwendolyn B. Bennett was about 44 when Walter J. Turner died.

On the map

About 14,349 km separate Melbourne, Victoria, Australia from Giddings, Texas, USA. 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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

From the biographies

Walter J. Turner: south melbourne, w.b. yeats, delphine marguerite dubuis, the hunter and other poems, romance, georgian poetry, bloomsbury, siegfried sassoon. Gwendolyn B. Bennett: giddings, texas, harlem renaissance, heritage, to usward, the crisis, fire!!, wadsworth, nevada, brooklyn, new york.

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.

The Dancer
Walter J. Turner
72%
Compare
Dirge
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
Romance
Walter J. Turner
70%
Compare
Secret
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
The Dancer
Walter J. Turner
70%
Compare
Secret
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
Romance
Walter J. Turner
69%
Compare
Dirge
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
Romance
Walter J. Turner
66%
Compare
Hatred
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
The Dancer
Walter J. Turner
66%
Compare
Hatred
Gwendolyn B. Bennett

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Walter J. Turner: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow. Gwendolyn B. Bennett: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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