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

E. E. Cummings E. E. Cummings

Poet B

Hart Crane Hart Crane
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 71% Poems 88% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings

14 October 1894 – 3 September 1962 (~68)
2 live poems · English

In the sun-dappled streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings entered the world with a quiet promise of rebellion that would one day shatter the conventions of American poetry. Known to family and friends simply as Estlin, and to the world as E.E. Cummings—or, in the lowercase stylings that publishers later adopted for his name—he would become one of the twentieth century’s most…

“The hardest battle is to be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Imagist Poets, Love Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Hart Crane

Hart Crane

21 July 1899 – 27 April 1932 (~33)
40 live poems · English

Hart Crane’s life was a blaze of incandescent vision cut short by the very torments that fueled his art. Born Harold Hart Crane on July 21, 1899, in the quiet village of Garrettsville, Ohio, he arrived into a world already humming with the industrial promise that would later become the spine of his poetry. His father, Clarence A. Crane, was a shrewd and ambitious candy manufacturer who would one day invent the Life S…

“What I am after is an assimilation of this experience, a more organic panorama, showing the continuous and living evidence of the past in the inmost vital substance of the present.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

E. E. Cummings
Hart Crane
1894 1962
They overlapped for 34 years (1899–1932). When Hart Crane was born, E. E. Cummings was about 5. E. E. Cummings was about 38 when Hart Crane died.
E. E. Cummings in history Hart Crane in history Years they were given

On the map

About 840 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Garrettsville, Ohio, United States. Shared ground: United States.

E. E. Cummings

Hart Crane

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

love life world death beauty

E. E. Cummings only

flowers beloved touch body glory dust soul darkness leaf nothingness

Hart Crane only

memory woman self desire tree light stone eyes music wind moth

From the biographies

E. E. Cummings: cambridge massachusetts, joy farm, the enormous room, william slater brown, eimi, tulips and chimneys, anne minnerly barton, marion morehouse. Hart Crane: garrettsville, cleveland, white buildings, the bridge, emil opffer, waldo frank, guggenheim fellowship, brooklyn bridge.

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.

Thy fingers make early flowers of all things
E. E. Cummings
80%
Compare
Time cannot be worn
Hart Crane
the glory is fallen out of
E. E. Cummings
80%
Compare
Pastorale
Hart Crane
Thy fingers make early flowers of all things
E. E. Cummings
79% love
Compare
Echoes
Hart Crane
the glory is fallen out of
E. E. Cummings
79% beauty
Compare
To the Cloud Juggler
Hart Crane
Thy fingers make early flowers of all things
E. E. Cummings
79% love, beloved, world
Compare
—And Bees of Paradise
Hart Crane
Thy fingers make early flowers of all things
E. E. Cummings
79%
Compare
Ere Elfish Night Shall Sift Another Day
Hart Crane

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1901 Establishment of the Nobel Prizes
1902 The Wright 1902 glider achieves practical three-axis control
1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1903 Publication of 'The Souls of Black Folk'
1903 Wright Brothers Achieve First Powered Flight Using Wind Tunnel Research
1906 Appointment as editor of Punch
1906 Publication of The Highwayman
1906 Upton Sinclair Publishes 'The Jungle'

E. E. Cummings

1916 Cummings Graduates from Harvard University
1917 Cummings' Arrest and Imprisonment
1917 Cummings' Experience in World War I
1920 Cummings' First Published Book
1929 Cummings' Marriage to Marion Morehouse
1935 Cummings' Publication of 'Complete Poems'
1945 Cummings' Move to Joy Farm
1962 Cummings' Last Major Publication

Hart Crane

1916 Hart Crane Moves to New York City and Begins Literary Career
1917 Hart Crane's First Major Publication and Recognition
1917 Parents' Divorce and Family Turmoil
1924 Residence in Brooklyn Heights with View of Brooklyn Bridge
1926 Publication of White Buildings
1928 Trip to Europe and Work on The Bridge
1930 Publication of The Bridge
1931 Guggenheim Fellowship and Time in Mexico

Emotional landscapes

E. E. Cummings: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Hart Crane: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality.

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