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

Helen Hoyt Helen Hoyt

Poet B

Hilda Doolittle Hilda Doolittle
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 80% Poems 82% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Helen Hoyt

Helen Hoyt

22 January 1887 – 2 August 1972 (~85)
2 live poems · English

Helen Hoyt, born on 22 January 1887 in Norwalk, Connecticut, and dead on 2 August 1972, belonged to the generation of American poets that came of age just as literary modernism was remaking the possibilities of verse. She was a poet, editor, anthologist, and perceptive advocate for new writing, yet her name has often remained at the edges of accounts dominated by more famous contemporaries. That relative obscurity ca…

“At present most of what we know, or think we know, of women has been found out by men. We have yet to hear what woman will tell of herself, and where can she tell more intimately than in poetry?”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Hilda Doolittle

Hilda Doolittle

10 September 1886 – 27 September 1961 (~75)
6 live poems · English

Hilda Doolittle, who published almost all her work as H.D., was born on 10 September 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and died on 27 September 1961 in Zürich, Switzerland. Few modern writers have so thoroughly transformed apparent limitation into artistic amplitude. The initials by which she became famous could seem austere, even impersonal: a pair of letters fit for the clean, compressed poems associated with Imagis…

“I have all faith in my work. I feel my work is beautiful, I have a deep faith in it, an absolute faith.”

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

In time

Helen Hoyt
Hilda Doolittle
1886 1972
They overlapped for 75 years (1887–1961). When Helen Hoyt was born, Hilda Doolittle was about 1. Helen Hoyt was about 74 when Hilda Doolittle died.
Helen Hoyt in history Hilda Doolittle in history Years they were given

On the map

About 175 km separate Norwalk, Connecticut, USA from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Helen Hoyt

Hilda Doolittle

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

beloved

Helen Hoyt only

desire heart women social park internal inner restraint expectations feet love self

Hilda Doolittle only

world life power fruit wind beauty nature helmsman inland boat return mythic

From the biographies

imagism women

Helen Hoyt: norwalk, connecticut, barnard college, poems of amis, the name of a rose, others for 1919, harriet monroe, william carlos williams. Hilda Doolittle: bethlehem, pennsylvania, ezra pound, imagism, sea garden, ocean imagery, greek mythology, richard aldington, bryn mawr college.

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.

Stature
Helen Hoyt
73% love, beloved
Compare
Loss
Hilda Doolittle
In the Park
Helen Hoyt
72% desire
Compare
Oread
Hilda Doolittle
In the Park
Helen Hoyt
72%
Compare
The Helmsman
Hilda Doolittle
In the Park
Helen Hoyt
70%
Compare
Garden
Hilda Doolittle
In the Park
Helen Hoyt
70%
Compare
Loss
Hilda Doolittle
Stature
Helen Hoyt
70% desire
Compare
Oread
Hilda Doolittle

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

Helen Hoyt

1905 Helen Hoyt's Education at Smith College
1911 Marriage to William H. Hoyt
1921 Publication of 'The Little House'
1922 Friendship with Edna St. Vincent Millay
1925 Move to New York City
1940 Publication of 'The Poet's Companion'
1959 Publication of 'The Collected Poems'
1965 Final Years in Connecticut

Hilda Doolittle

1901 Early Education of Hilda Doolittle
1910 Friendship with Ezra Pound
1912 Friendship with Gertrude Stein
1914 First Publication of H.D.'s Poetry
1916 Publication of 'Sea Garden'
1930 Influence of Psychoanalysis
1946 Return to the United States
1961 Publication of 'Helen in Egypt'

Emotional landscapes

Helen Hoyt: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Hilda Doolittle: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

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