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

Paul Laurence Dunbar Paul Laurence Dunbar

Poet B

Raymond Garfield Dandridge Raymond Garfield Dandridge
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 81% Poems 86% Blended 83%
Swap sides Another related pair
Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar

27 June 1872 – 9 February 1906 (~34)
12 live poems · English

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on 27 June 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, and died there on 9 February 1906, only thirty-three years later. In that brief life he became one of the most accomplished and consequential American writers of his generation: a poet of extraordinary musical discipline, a novelist and short-story writer, a public reader, a lyricist, and, in many ways, the first African American author to achieve a broad…

“I've got to write dialect poetry; it's the only way I can get them to listen to me.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
Raymond Garfield Dandridge

Raymond Garfield Dandridge

c. 1882 – 24 February 1930 (~48)
2 live poems · English

Raymond Garfield Dandridge emerged from the working-class streets of Cincinnati’s Price Hill neighborhood as one of the most resilient and distinctive voices in early twentieth-century African American poetry. Born around 1882 in a modest home that overlooked the rolling hills and river valleys of southern Ohio, he lived a life defined by both vibrant physical promise and profound physical limitation. By the time he…

“Tis good to make the best of it.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Death & Mortality, Harlem Renaissance, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality

In time

Paul Laurence Dunbar
Raymond Garfield Dandridge
1872 1930
They overlapped for 25 years (1882–1906). When Raymond Garfield Dandridge was born, Paul Laurence Dunbar was about 10. Raymond Garfield Dandridge was about 24 when Paul Laurence Dunbar died.

On the map

About 78 km separate Dayton, Ohio, USA from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Both have ground in Ohio.

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

Paul Laurence Dunbar only

Raymond Garfield Dandridge only

From the biographies

Paul Laurence Dunbar: dayton ohio, joshua dunbar, matilda murphy dunbar, oak and ivy, majors and minors, lyrics of lowly life, we wear the mask, sympathy. Raymond Garfield Dandridge: price hill, penciled poems, the poet and other poems, zalka peetruza, paul laurence dunbar, harlem renaissance, hemiplegia, ellen c. dandridge.

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 Poet and His Song
Paul Laurence Dunbar
78% life
Compare
Valuation
Raymond Garfield Dandridge
The Poet and His Song
Paul Laurence Dunbar
78% life
Compare
Time to Die
Raymond Garfield Dandridge
Fulfilment
Paul Laurence Dunbar
78%
Compare
Valuation
Raymond Garfield Dandridge
Common Things
Paul Laurence Dunbar
76% life
Compare
Valuation
Raymond Garfield Dandridge
Merry Autumn
Paul Laurence Dunbar
76% life
Compare
Valuation
Raymond Garfield Dandridge
Religion
Paul Laurence Dunbar
75%
Compare
Time to Die
Raymond Garfield Dandridge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Paul Laurence Dunbar: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness. Raymond Garfield Dandridge: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality.

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