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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein

Poet B

Eunice Tietjens Eunice Tietjens
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 82% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

3 February 1874 – 27 July 1946 (~72)
25 live poems · English

Gertrude Stein was born on 3 February 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, then a separate city and now part of Pittsburgh, and died on 27 July 1946 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. Few modern writers have made language itself so central to the drama of literature. Stein was a novelist, poet, playwright, critic, lecturer, collector, salon host, memoirist, and commanding public personality. She was also, in collaboration…

“I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, of course, are more important.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Irony, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Eunice Tietjens

Eunice Tietjens

29 July 1884 – 6 September 1944 (~60)
2 live poems · English

Eunice Tietjens was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 29 July 1884, into a city whose energy, contradictions, and cultural ambitions would shape the rest of her life. She died in the same city on 6 September 1944, after a career that had carried her across the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. During those sixty years, she became known not only as a poet but also as a journalist, traveler, lecturer, edito…

“But from that evening some floodgate had broken in me and I was beginning to be awake.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Gertrude Stein
Eunice Tietjens
1874 1946
They overlapped for 61 years (1884–1944). When Eunice Tietjens was born, Gertrude Stein was about 10. Gertrude Stein was about 70 when Eunice Tietjens died.
Gertrude Stein in history Eunice Tietjens in history Years they were given

On the map

About 657 km separate Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA from Chicago, Illinois, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Gertrude Stein

Eunice Tietjens

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

social life

Gertrude Stein only

world color domestic mirrors change perception table ordinary tender rain light decision

Eunice Tietjens only

tietjens servant feet body beauty golden woman shovel machine industrial monster earth

From the biographies

women

Gertrude Stein: allegheny, pittsburgh, neuilly-sur-seine, alice b. toklas, three lives, tender buttons, the making of americans, harvard annex. Eunice Tietjens: chicago, the candle, profiles from china, the singing wood, the crossroads, harriet monroe, poetry magazine, imagism.

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.

Glazed Glitter
Gertrude Stein
75%
Compare
My Servant
Eunice Tietjens
Careless Water
Gertrude Stein
75%
Compare
My Servant
Eunice Tietjens
A Light in the Moon
Gertrude Stein
75%
Compare
My Servant
Eunice Tietjens
A Little Called Pauline
Gertrude Stein
74% social
Compare
My Servant
Eunice Tietjens
Why is a pale white not paler than blue
Gertrude Stein
74%
Compare
My Servant
Eunice Tietjens
A Substance in a Cushion
Gertrude Stein
73% social
Compare
My Servant
Eunice Tietjens

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
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

Gertrude Stein

1903 Move to Paris
1907 Meeting Alice B. Toklas
1909 First Major Publication: 'Three Lives'
1914 Publication of 'Tender Buttons'
1931 Publication of 'How to Write'
1933 Publication of 'The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'

Eunice Tietjens

1906 Eunice Tietjens Graduates from the University of Chicago
1918 Marriage to William A. Tietjens
1919 Publication of 'The New Poetry: An Anthology'
1921 Eunice Tietjens Travels to Europe
1930 Publication of 'The Poet's Companion'
1941 Eunice Tietjens' Work Featured in Anthologies
1943 Publication of 'The Collected Poems of Eunice Tietjens'
1944 Death of Eunice Tietjens

Emotional landscapes

Gertrude Stein: Wonder, Irony, Tenderness. Eunice Tietjens: Sorrow, Irony, Despair.

Skip to main content