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

Cale Young Rice Cale Young Rice

Poet B

Countee Cullen Countee Cullen
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 71% Poems 87% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Cale Young Rice

Cale Young Rice

7 December 1872 – 24 January 1943 (~71)
8 live poems · English

Cale Young Rice was born on 7 December 1872 in Dixon, Kentucky, and died on 24 January 1943 in Louisville, Kentucky. During his lifetime he was a conspicuous, if never wholly central, figure in American letters: a poet of formal accomplishment, a playwright attracted to historical spectacle and moral conflict, a lecturer, traveler, and public literary presence. In the decades around 1900, when American poetry stood b…

“There are many qualities—of imagination, passion, charm, etc.—which make poetry when they are embodied in a sufficiently musical rhythm.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen

30 May 1903 – 9 January 1946 (~43)
4 live poems · English

On May 30, 1903, a child was born who would become one of the most celebrated voices of the Harlem Renaissance, yet whose origins remain shrouded in the kind of mystery that seems almost poetic in retrospect. Countee Cullen's exact birthplace has been disputed—some records suggest New York City, others Louisville, Kentucky, and still others Baltimore, Maryland. This uncertainty about his origins would prove oddly fit…

“In spite of myself I find that I am actuated by a strong sense of race consciousness. This grows upon me, I find, as I grow older, and although I struggle against it, it colors my writing, I fear, in spite of everything I can do.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Cale Young Rice
Countee Cullen
1872 1946
They overlapped for 41 years (1903–1943). When Countee Cullen was born, Cale Young Rice was about 31. Countee Cullen was about 40 when Cale Young Rice died.
Cale Young Rice in history Countee Cullen in history Years they were given

On the map

About 188 km separate Dixon, Kentucky, USA from Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Both have ground in Kentucky.

Cale Young Rice

Countee Cullen

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

world death beauty grief divine

Cale Young Rice only

life woman grave nature mother moor quest journey sublime mystic love

Countee Cullen only

racial suffering social boys children tableau thunder lightning spring sorrow crown

From the biographies

harvard university

Cale Young Rice: dixon, kentucky, alice hegan rice, from dusk to dusk, many gods, a night in avignon, nirvana days, cumberland university, harvard university. Countee Cullen: harlem renaissance, new york city, w.e.b. du bois, color, yet do i marvel, incident, copper sun, the ballad of the brown girl.

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.

On the Moor
Cale Young Rice
76% grief
Compare
Any Human to Another
Countee Cullen
Incredible!
Cale Young Rice
76% spring
Compare
To John Keats, Poet at Spring Time
Countee Cullen
Sea-Hoardings
Cale Young Rice
76% world, beauty
Compare
To John Keats, Poet at Spring Time
Countee Cullen
Wanting the Moon
Cale Young Rice
74%
Compare
Any Human to Another
Countee Cullen
The Mystic
Cale Young Rice
73% divine
Compare
Yet Do I Marvel
Countee Cullen
Sea-Hoardings
Cale Young Rice
72%
Compare
Any Human to Another
Countee Cullen

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1903 Publication of 'The Souls of Black Folk'
1903 Wright Brothers Achieve First Powered Flight Using Wind Tunnel Research
1906 Appointment as editor of Punch
1906 Publication of The Highwayman
1906 Upton Sinclair Publishes 'The Jungle'
1907 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
1908 Discovery of Oil at Masjid i-Sulaiman in Persia

Cale Young Rice

1890 Education at Cumberland University
1894 Education at Harvard University
1900 Publication of 'From Dusk to Dusk'
1908 Publication of 'Nirvana Days'
1910 Move to New York City
1915 Friendship with Robert Frost
1921 Publication of 'The Book of the Dead'
1930 Publication of 'The Ghost of the Sun'

Countee Cullen

1910 Countee Cullen's Adoption by Reverend Cullen
1920 Countee Cullen's Friendship with Langston Hughes
1925 Countee Cullen Graduates from New York University
1925 Countee Cullen's First Major Poetry Collection Published
1926 Cullen joins Opportunity and begins The Dark Tower
1926 Cullen takes a master’s degree at Harvard
1927 Cullen edits the anthology Caroling Dusk
1928 Countee Cullen Marries Yolande Du Bois

Emotional landscapes

Cale Young Rice: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality. Countee Cullen: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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