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

James D. Corrothers James D. Corrothers

Poet B

William H. A. Moore William H. A. Moore
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 78% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
James D. Corrothers

James D. Corrothers

2 July 1869 – 12 February 1917 (~48)
1 live poem · English

James David Corrothers entered the world on July 2, 1869, in Cass County, Michigan, a place where the winds off Lake Michigan carried echoes of freedom from the Underground Railroad routes that had once snaked through its forests and fields. He left it far too soon, on February 12, 1917, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, felled by a stroke at the age of forty-seven while serving a Presbyterian congregation. In the brief…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Anger
William H. A. Moore

William H. A. Moore

c. 1885 – 1960 (~75)
1 live poem · English

William H. A. Moore, born about 1885 and deceased in 1960, belongs to that important but still insufficiently recovered generation of African American poets whose careers connected the literary culture of the late nineteenth century with the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance and its related movements in Chicago, Washington, and other urban centers. His surviving reputation rests on a small body of lyric poetry, sca…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow

In time

James D. Corrothers
William H. A. Moore
1869 1960
They overlapped for 33 years (1885–1917). When William H. A. Moore was born, James D. Corrothers was about 16. William H. A. Moore was about 32 when James D. Corrothers died.

On the map

About 1,009 km separate Cass County, Michigan, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Shared ground: United States.

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

James D. Corrothers only

William H. A. Moore only

From the biographies

chicago racial

James D. Corrothers: cass county, south haven, muskegon, t. thomas fortune, w. e. b. du bois, the black cat club, psalm of the race, the snapping of the bow. William H. A. Moore: new york city, dusk songs, the crisis, james weldon johnson, harlem renaissance, city college of new york, columbia university, 1919 race riot.

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.

At the Closed Gate of Justice
James D. Corrothers
82% racial, african
Compare
It Was Not Fate
William H. A. Moore

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

James D. Corrothers: Despair, Sorrow, Anger. William H. A. Moore: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow.

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