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

James Oppenheim James Oppenheim

Poet B

Alfred Kreymborg Alfred Kreymborg
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 76% Poems 83% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
James Oppenheim

James Oppenheim

24 May 1882 – 4 August 1932 (~50)
2 live poems · English

James Oppenheim, born on 24 May 1882 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and dead on 4 August 1932 in New York City, belonged to that fervent generation of American writers who wanted literature to enter the streets. He was a poet, novelist, editor, social observer, and eventually an interpreter of the psyche. His name is most often remembered through “Bread and Roses,” the ringing labor poem that gave memorable language to the…

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Anger, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
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…

“An editor's primary duty to his contributors is to print them without making them pay for the privilege.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

James Oppenheim
Alfred Kreymborg
1882 1966
They overlapped for 50 years (1883–1932). When Alfred Kreymborg was born, James Oppenheim was about 1. Alfred Kreymborg was about 49 when James Oppenheim died.
James Oppenheim in history Alfred Kreymborg in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,622 km separate St. Paul, Minnesota, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Both have ground in New York City and New York.

James Oppenheim

Alfred Kreymborg

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

life world

James Oppenheim only

bread roses women collective beauty industrial creator spider humanity philosophical

Alfred Kreymborg only

play prodigy dignity idealism stream dream tree bird self

From the biographies

new york city

James Oppenheim: st. paul, minnesota, new york city, bread and roses, joseph oppenheim, lucy seckel, the nine-tenths, monday morning and other poems, hudson guild. Alfred Kreymborg: new york city, german immigrants, greenwich village, alfred stieglitz, the glebe, des imagistes, imagism, others: a magazine of the new verse.

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.

Man, the Creator!
James Oppenheim
78% life, world
Compare
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
Man, the Creator!
James Oppenheim
76% world
Compare
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
Bread and Roses
James Oppenheim
74% life
Compare
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
Bread and Roses
James Oppenheim
70%
Compare
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom

James Oppenheim

1884 Relocation to New York City
1901 Early Work at Hudson Guild Settlement House
1905 Marriage to Lucy Seckel
1905 Teaching at New York Hebrew Technical School for Girls
1911 Publication of 'The Book of Poems'
1912 Friendship with Edna St. Vincent Millay
1915 Founding of the Poetry Society of America
1920 Publication of 'The Great American Novel'

Alfred Kreymborg

1900 Kreymborg's Musical Education
1914 Publication of 'The Little Review'
1915 Founding of 'Others' Magazine
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry' Anthology
1920 Kreymborg's Friendship with William Carlos Williams
1920 Publication of 'The New York Times' Poetry Section
1945 Kreymborg's Involvement with the New American Poetry

Emotional landscapes

James Oppenheim: Anger, Longing, Sorrow. Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.

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