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 Rose Benét William Rose Benét

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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71% Poems 79% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Rose Benét

William Rose Benét

2 February 1886 – 4 May 1950 (~64)
2 live poems · English

William Rose Benét was born on 2 February 1886 at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York, and died on 4 May 1950 in New York City. During his lifetime he became known as a poet, editor, critic, anthologist, essayist, novelist in verse, and tireless popularizer of literature. He belonged to a family unusually rich in literary talent: his younger brother was the poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benét, author of John Brow…

“Designed to guide readers through the vocabulary and allusiveness of writers as well as provide them with a genuine source book of ideas.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
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…

“Poetry is the attempt to express the inexpressible in terms of the unforgettable.”

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

In time

William Rose Benét
Alfred Kreymborg
1883 1966
They overlapped for 65 years (1886–1950). When William Rose Benét was born, Alfred Kreymborg was about 3. Alfred Kreymborg was about 67 when William Rose Benét died.

On the map

About 12 km separate Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, New York, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Both have ground in New York.

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

William Rose Benét: fort hamilton, brooklyn, stephen vincent benét, merchants from cathay, perpetual light, the skater of ghost lake, the great white wall, the burglar of the zodiac. 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.

The Skater of Ghost Lake
William Rose Benét
75% world, life
Compare
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
The Skater of Ghost Lake
William Rose Benét
69% world
Compare
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
The Ponies
William Rose Benét
66% world, life
Compare
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
The Ponies
William Rose Benét
64% world
Compare
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Rose Benét: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder. Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.

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