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



Poet Affinities

Every poet has a thematic centre of gravity averaged from their critiqued poems. Here we use that to find the poets whose work rhymes with a given writer — often in surprising ways.

Rank by: Both (blended) Life & context Their poems

Poets whose work rhymes most with Paul Verlaine by life & context

Charles Baudelaire
9 April 1821–31 August 1867 (~46)
4 poems analysed
84% affinity
Shared: paris, french
Arthur Rimbaud
20 October 1854–10 November 1891 (~37)
2 poems analysed
82% affinity
Shared: paris, franco-prussian war
Paul Valéry
30 October 1871–20 July 1945 (~74)
3 poems analysed
82% affinity
Shared: franco-prussian war, french, desire
Alphonse de Lamartine
21 October 1790–1 March 1869 (~79)
2 poems analysed
82% affinity
Shared: french, desire
Paul-Jean Toulet
5 June 1867–6 September 1920 (~53)
1 poem analysed
80% affinity
Shared: french
Paul Éluard
14 December 1895–18 November 1952 (~57)
1 poem analysed
79% affinity
Shared: paris, french
Stéphane Mallarmé
18 March 1842–9 September 1898 (~56)
1 poem analysed
78% affinity
Shared: paris, french
Pierre de Ronsard
11 September 1524–27 December 1585 (~61)
4 poems analysed
77% affinity
Shared: french
Ernest Dowson
2 August 1867–23 February 1900 (~33)
18 poems analysed
74% affinity
Shared: french
Arthur Symons
28 February 1865–22 January 1945 (~80)
23 poems analysed
74% affinity
Shared: french, helped
Philip Bourke Marston
13 August 1850–13 February 1887 (~37)
22 poems analysed
74% affinity
John Keats
31 October 1795–23 February 1821 (~26)
23 poems analysed
73% affinity
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