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

John Gould Fletcher John Gould Fletcher

Poet B

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens
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 73% Poems 85% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher

3 January 1886 – 20 May 1950 (~64)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American poetry, few figures embody the restless spirit of early twentieth-century modernism quite like John Gould Fletcher. Born into the genteel society of Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 3, 1886, Fletcher would traverse continents and literary movements, ultimately crafting a body of work that bridged the gap between traditional American verse and the revolutionary experiments of European mode…

“It is America's opportunity to lay the foundations for a new flowering of English verse, and to lay them as broad as they are strong.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

2 October 1879 – 2 August 1955 (~76)
8 live poems · English

Wallace Stevens stands as one of the most enigmatic and profound voices in American poetry—a philosophical poet who balanced a successful corporate career with the creation of some of the most intellectually challenging and aesthetically innovative verse of the 20th century. His poetry, characterized by its luxuriant language, philosophical depth, and preoccupation with the imagination's relationship to reality, cont…

“One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Gould Fletcher
Wallace Stevens
1879 1955
They overlapped for 65 years (1886–1950). When John Gould Fletcher was born, Wallace Stevens was about 7. Wallace Stevens was about 71 when John Gould Fletcher died.
John Gould Fletcher in history Wallace Stevens in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,568 km separate Little Rock, Arkansas, USA from Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. Shared ground: United States.

John Gould Fletcher

Wallace Stevens

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

imagination beauty soul world

John Gould Fletcher only

fantasy dream grey water river reality ship islands blue memory decay pagodas

Wallace Stevens only

nature birds wind death light swans statues plough horn life woman grief

From the biographies

harvard university

John Gould Fletcher: little rock, arkansas river valley, ezra pound, imagist movement, irradiations: sand and spray, blue symphony, goblins and pagodas, the tree of life. Wallace Stevens: reading, pennsylvania, harvard university, george santayana, harmonium, sunday morning, the emperor of ice-cream, thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, the snow man.

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.

Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
79% beauty, soul, world
Compare
Invective Against Swans
Wallace Stevens
Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
76%
Compare
The Death of a Soldier
Wallace Stevens
In the grey skirts of the fog
John Gould Fletcher
74%
Compare
Invective Against Swans
Wallace Stevens
Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
74% world
Compare
Another Weeping Woman
Wallace Stevens
Blue Symphony I
John Gould Fletcher
73%
Compare
Re-statement of Romance
Wallace Stevens
In the grey skirts of the fog
John Gould Fletcher
73% imagination
Compare
Palace of the Babies
Wallace Stevens

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1886 Coca-Cola invented by John Pemberton in Atlanta
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia
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

John Gould Fletcher

1904 Education at Harvard University
1910 Marriage to Emily T. Fletcher
1916 Publication of 'The Poems of John Gould Fletcher'
1919 Move to England
1920 Friendship with Ezra Pound
1930 Publication of 'The Burning Fountain'
1935 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1939 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Wallace Stevens

1900 Wallace Stevens Graduates from Harvard University
1909 Marriage to Elsie Violet Kachel
1923 Publication of 'Harmonium'
1934 Becomes Vice President at an Insurance Company
1935 Publication of 'Ideas of Order'
1947 Awarded the Bollingen Prize
1950 Publication of 'The Auroras of Autumn'
1954 Publication of 'The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens'

Emotional landscapes

John Gould Fletcher: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Wallace Stevens: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow.

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