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

Alfred Kreymborg Alfred Kreymborg

Poet B

Herbert Gorman Herbert Gorman
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 80% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that the people who really enjoy chess are the dubs and the duffers, experts who have resigned their ambitions, those who play only for pastime, and, of course, the great fraternity of the kibbitzers.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Herbert Gorman

Herbert Gorman

January 1893 – 28 October 1954 (~61)
2 live poems · English

Herbert Sherman Gorman entered the world in 1893 in Springfield, Massachusetts, a bustling industrial city nestled along the Connecticut River, where the hum of factories and the clang of railroads shaped the rhythms of daily life. Though the precise day of his birth remains unrecorded in many accounts, his arrival coincided with an America on the cusp of modernity, one foot still planted in the Victorian era and the…

“True rebellion in literature does not consist in noise, but in the quiet insistence on seeing reality without blinders.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Alfred Kreymborg
Herbert Gorman
1883 1966
They overlapped for 62 years (1893–1954). When Herbert Gorman was born, Alfred Kreymborg was about 10. Alfred Kreymborg was about 71 when Herbert Gorman died.
Alfred Kreymborg in history Herbert Gorman in history Years they were given

On the map

About 194 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. Both have ground in New York.

Alfred Kreymborg

Herbert Gorman

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

self

Alfred Kreymborg only

world play prodigy dignity life idealism stream dream tree bird

Herbert Gorman only

mandrake attachment grief pain sufferer love lilith moon desire longing passionate beauty

From the biographies

new york city greenwich village

Alfred Kreymborg: new york city, german immigrants, greenwich village, alfred stieglitz, the glebe, des imagistes, imagism, others: a magazine of the new verse. Herbert Gorman: springfield massachusetts, new york city, jean wright gorman, the barcarole of james smith, the procession of masks, the peterborough anthology, james joyce, a passage to india.

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.

Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
75%
Compare
Lilith, Lilith
Herbert Gorman
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
72%
Compare
Lilith, Lilith
Herbert Gorman
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
69% self
Compare
The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
67%
Compare
The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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
1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'
1895 The X-Ray Discovery
1896 Publication of 'A Shropshire Lad'

Alfred Kreymborg

1900 Kreymborg's Musical Education
1914 Publication of 'The Little Review'
1915 Founding of 'Others' Magazine
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1917 Publication of 'The New Poetry' Anthology
1920 Kreymborg's Friendship with William Carlos Williams
1920 Publication of 'The New York Times' Poetry Section
1945 Kreymborg's Involvement with the New American Poetry

Herbert Gorman

1909 Early Literary Aspirations of Herbert Gorman
1910 Career Beginnings in Journalism
1918 Relocation to New York City
1920 Book Reviewer for The New York Times
1923 Marriage to Margaret Gorman
1930 Publication of 'The Man Who Was a Horse'
1935 Friendship with William Carlos Williams
1941 Publication of 'The Life of the Poet'

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Herbert Gorman: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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