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

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Poet B

James D. Corrothers James D. Corrothers
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 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

23 February 1868 – 27 August 1963 (~95)
1 live poem · English

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois entered the world on February 23, 1868, in the small, rolling hills of Great Barrington, Massachusetts—a town where the air carried the crisp scent of New England pines and the quiet rhythms of rural life. Born into a family of mixed African, Dutch, and French Huguenot heritage, he was the son of Alfred Du Bois, a restless barber and laborer of Haitian descent who soon vanished from t…

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
James D. Corrothers

James D. Corrothers

2 July 1869 – 12 February 1917 (~48)
1 live poem · English

James David Corrothers entered the world on July 2, 1869, in Cass County, Michigan, a place where the winds off Lake Michigan carried echoes of freedom from the Underground Railroad routes that had once snaked through its forests and fields. He left it far too soon, on February 12, 1917, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, felled by a stroke at the age of forty-seven while serving a Presbyterian congregation. In the brief…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Anger

In time

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
James D. Corrothers
1868 1963
They overlapped for 49 years (1869–1917). When James D. Corrothers was born, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was about 1. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was about 49 when James D. Corrothers died.

On the map

About 1,043 km separate Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA from Cass County, Michigan, 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.

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

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois only

James D. Corrothers only

From the biographies

race racial

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: great barrington, alfred du bois, mary silvina burghardt, fisk university, the souls of black folk, double consciousness, color line, niagara movement. James D. Corrothers: cass county, south haven, muskegon, t. thomas fortune, w. e. b. du bois, the black cat club, psalm of the race, the snapping of the bow.

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.

Paul Laurence Dunbar
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
80%
Compare
At the Closed Gate of Justice
James D. Corrothers

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. James D. Corrothers: Despair, Sorrow, Anger.

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