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.

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

Claude McKay Claude McKay

Poet B

William Stanley Braithwaite William Stanley Braithwaite
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 70% Poems 82% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Claude McKay

Claude McKay

15 September 1890 – 22 May 1948 (~58)
5 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American literary history, few figures embody the contradictions and complexities of the twentieth century quite like Claude McKay. Born Festus Claudius McKay on September 15, 1890, in the verdant hills of Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, this poet, novelist, and essayist would become one of the most powerful voices of the Harlem Renaissance, despite spending much of his life in restless exile from the m…

“This great catastrophe has come upon the world proving the real hollowness of nationhood, patriotism, racial pride and most of the things which one was taught to respect and reverence.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
William Stanley Braithwaite

William Stanley Braithwaite

6 December 1878 – 8 June 1962 (~84)
2 live poems · English

William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite entered the world on December 6, 1878, in Boston, Massachusetts, a city pulsing with literary ambition and the lingering echoes of abolitionist fervor. He departed it on June 8, 1962, at his home on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, New York, after a brief illness, at the age of eighty-three. In the eighty-three years between those dates, Braithwaite forged a remarkable life as poet, cr…

“These new talents were new roots in a soil not too richly fertilized by the chemistry of original song.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Peace

In time

Claude McKay
William Stanley Braithwaite
1878 1962
They overlapped for 59 years (1890–1948). When Claude McKay was born, William Stanley Braithwaite was about 12. William Stanley Braithwaite was about 70 when Claude McKay died.

On the map

About 2,766 km separate Clarendon Parish, Jamaica 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

harlem racial

Claude McKay: clarendon parish, jamaica, harlem renaissance, if we must die, the white house, harlem shadows, walter jekyll, red summer. William Stanley Braithwaite: boston, massachusetts, harlem, new york, emma kelly, lyrics of life and love, the house of falling leaves, anthology of magazine verse, spingarn medal, atlanta university.

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.

A Red Flower
Claude McKay
72%
Compare
Rhapsody
William Stanley Braithwaite
Truth
Claude McKay
71% world
Compare
Rhapsody
William Stanley Braithwaite
If We Must Die
Claude McKay
70% world
Compare
Sic Vita
William Stanley Braithwaite
A Red Flower
Claude McKay
69% beauty
Compare
Sic Vita
William Stanley Braithwaite
Truth
Claude McKay
68% world
Compare
Sic Vita
William Stanley Braithwaite
Africa
Claude McKay
68% world
Compare
Rhapsody
William Stanley Braithwaite

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Claude McKay: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality. William Stanley Braithwaite: Joy, Wonder, Peace.

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