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

Franklin P. Adams Franklin P. Adams

Poet B

Louis Untermeyer Louis Untermeyer
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 71% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Franklin P. Adams

Franklin P. Adams

15 November 1881 – 23 March 1960 (~79)
1 live poem · English

Franklin Pierce Adams, known almost everywhere in print by the compact and memorable signature “F. P. A.,” was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 15 November 1881, and died in New York City on 23 March 1960. During the first half of the twentieth century, he became one of America’s most recognizable newspaper humorists, a poet of urbane light verse, an editor, anthologist, critic, and central presence in the literary soci…

“There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer

1 October 1885 – 18 December 1977 (~92)
3 live poems · English

In the sprawling landscape of twentieth-century American letters, few figures cast as long or as peculiar a shadow as Louis Untermeyer. Born on October 1, 1885, in New York City, and dying ninety-two years later on December 18, 1977, in Newtown, Connecticut, Untermeyer occupied a unique position in American cultural life. He was not primarily remembered as a great poet himself, though he published volumes of verse. H…

“What most of us don't realize is that everyone loves poetry.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Franklin P. Adams
Louis Untermeyer
1881 1977
They overlapped for 76 years (1885–1960). When Louis Untermeyer was born, Franklin P. Adams was about 4. Louis Untermeyer was about 75 when Franklin P. Adams died.
Franklin P. Adams in history Louis Untermeyer in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,144 km separate Chicago, Illinois, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Both have ground in New York City and New York.

Franklin P. Adams

Louis Untermeyer

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

social

Franklin P. Adams only

rich wealth poverty lamp cigar fate

Louis Untermeyer only

beauty self miner caliban divine coal light stars darkness world life death

From the biographies

new york city

Franklin P. Adams: chicago, new york city, f. p. a., baseball's sad lexicon, the conning tower, algonquin round table, in cupid's court, tobogganing on parnassus. Louis Untermeyer: new york city, newtown, connecticut, modern american poetry, harriet monroe, ezra pound, t.s. eliot, carl sandburg, robert frost.

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 Rich Man
Franklin P. Adams
71%
Compare
Matter
Louis Untermeyer
The Rich Man
Franklin P. Adams
68% social
Compare
Implication
Louis Untermeyer
The Rich Man
Franklin P. Adams
67%
Compare
Caliban in the Coal Mines
Louis Untermeyer

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Coca-Cola invented by John Pemberton in Atlanta
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia
1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis

Franklin P. Adams

1899 Education at the University of Michigan
1904 Move to New York City
1904 Start of 'Always in Good Humor' Column
1910 Publication of 'Baseball's Sad Lexicon'
1914 Renaming of Column to 'The Conning Tower'
1920 Involvement in the New York Literary Scene
1920 Publication of 'The New York Times Book Review'
1934 Publication of 'The Best of F.P.A.'

Louis Untermeyer

1901 Early Education and Family Background of Louis Untermeyer
1911 First Poetry Collection Published
1917 Marriage to Jean Starr Untermeyer
1931 Publication of 'The Poetry of America'
1935 Involvement with the Federal Writers' Project
1938 Publication of 'The New American Poetry'
1941 Marriage to Anna Untermeyer
1956 Publication of 'The Collected Poems of Louis Untermeyer'

Emotional landscapes

Franklin P. Adams: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. Louis Untermeyer: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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