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

William Stanley Braithwaite William Stanley Braithwaite

Poet B

Theodore Henry Shackelford Theodore Henry Shackelford
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 78% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“The poets are doing satisfying and vitally excellent work, and it only remains for the American public to do its duty by showing a substantial appreciation.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities
Theodore Henry Shackelford

Theodore Henry Shackelford

29 May 1887 – 5 February 1923 (~36)
2 live poems · English

Theodore Henry Shackelford entered the world on May 29, 1887, in the small community of Essex, in Essex County, Ontario, Canada—just a stone’s throw from the bustling border town of Windsor. The air there carried the crisp bite of Lake Erie’s winds, and the landscape, though far from the cotton fields of the American South, still echoed with the stories of Black families who had found refuge in Canada via the Undergr…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

William Stanley Braithwaite
Theodore Henry Shackelford
1878 1962
They overlapped for 37 years (1887–1923). When Theodore Henry Shackelford was born, William Stanley Braithwaite was about 9. William Stanley Braithwaite was about 45 when Theodore Henry Shackelford died.
William Stanley Braithwaite in history Theodore Henry Shackelford in history Years they were given

On the map

About 961 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Essex, Ontario, Canada. Shared ground: United States.

William Stanley Braithwaite

Theodore Henry Shackelford

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 dreams

William Stanley Braithwaite only

world heart beauty love wonder sorrow sunset

Theodore Henry Shackelford only

tradition bread mammy african humor commencement

From the biographies

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. Theodore Henry Shackelford: essex county, ontario, mammy’s cracklin’ bread, my country, paul laurence dunbar, new negro movement, sojourner truth home, colored orphanage.

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.

Sic Vita
William Stanley Braithwaite
70% life
Compare
Mammy's Cracklin' Bread
Theodore Henry Shackelford
Rhapsody
William Stanley Braithwaite
69% dreams
Compare
Commencement
Theodore Henry Shackelford
Sic Vita
William Stanley Braithwaite
68%
Compare
Commencement
Theodore Henry Shackelford
Rhapsody
William Stanley Braithwaite
64% life
Compare
Mammy's Cracklin' Bread
Theodore Henry Shackelford

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks

William Stanley Braithwaite

1885 Early Education of William Stanley Braithwaite
1913 Founding of the 'Boston Evening Transcript' Literary Section
1919 Relocation to Harlem
1925 Publication of 'The New Negro'
1925 Publication of 'The Poetry of the Negro'
1938 Recognition by the NAACP
1940 Establishment of the 'Poetry Society of America' Membership
1945 Publication of 'The Poems of William Stanley Braithwaite'

Theodore Henry Shackelford

1906 Relocation to Windsor
1912 Marriage to Mary Johnson
1913 Birth of First Child
1915 Publication of 'Songs of the Soul'
1919 Relocation to Toronto
1921 Publication of 'Voices of the Past'

Emotional landscapes

William Stanley Braithwaite: Joy, Wonder, Peace. Theodore Henry Shackelford: Joy, Tenderness, Peace.

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