Flowers of the rock before the green seawith veins that reminded me of other lovesgleaming in the slow drizzleflowers of the rock, facesthat came when none spoke and spoke to methat they let me touch them after the silenceamong pine trees, oleanders and plane trees. https://draft2digital.com/book/3562890 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J
George Seferis – Collected Poems
I am re-reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. And in doing a little Wiki research on the German novelist, I discovered he also wrote poetry. I bought a collection of his verses entitled Poems by Hermann Hesse: Selected and Translated By James Wright (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970). Most of the poems are short (which I […]
Poems by Hermann Hesse
On March 12, 1955, the death of Charlie Parker marked the passing of a jazz revolutionary. As a central figure in the Bebop movement, Parker reshaped improvisation and inspired a new vocabulary in English music criticism—introducing terms and metaphors that still define how musicians and critics describe jazz performance today.
Death of Charlie Parker (1920–1955) — The Jazz Innovator Who Reshaped the Language of Music
Published on March 9, 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith transformed how English discusses economics. By introducing concepts like the “invisible hand” and “division of labor,” the work established a lasting vocabulary for analyzing markets, trade, and national prosperity.
Publication of The Wealth of Nations (1776) – The Book That Gave English the Language of Modern Economics
Born on March 8, 1859, Kenneth Grahame shaped modern children’s literature with The Wind in the Willows. His lyrical pastoral prose turned animal tales into reflections on friendship, home, and the quiet beauty of the English countryside, blending gentle humor with philosophical calm that continues to influence storytelling today.
Birth of Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) – The Storyteller Who Turned the English Countryside into Myth
THURSDAYI saw her die many timessometimes crying in my armssometimes in a stranger’s armssometimes alone, naked;in this way, she lived with me.Now I know, at last, that nothing exists furtherand I wait.If I grieve, it is my personal matterlike the feelings for simple things as theseand as they say we have gone beyond them;and yet […]
George Seferis – Collected Poems
Born on March 6, 1806, Elizabeth Barrett Browning expanded the emotional and intellectual range of Victorian English poetry. Through works like Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh, she blended lyric passion with philosophical reflection, proving poetry could explore love, identity, and social justice with remarkable depth and rhetorical elegance.
Birth of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) — A Transformative Voice in Victorian Poetry
Born on March 1, 1913, Ralph Ellison reshaped the American novel through symbolic layering, jazz-inflected rhythm, and philosophical depth. In Invisible Man, he fused political urgency with introspective narration, expanding the language of identity and redefining who could stand at the center of American literary expression.
Birth of Ralph Ellison (1913–1994) – The Voice That Made America Confront Its Invisible Self
Within the Salon community we count many devotees of the writing of Virginia Woolf and every year we offer a number of studies focusing on her work, some online and others based in some of the places she loved. This autumn we will run the seventh in our series of Virginia Woolf travel studies in […]
Campaign to protect views immortalised in Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’
Born in 1802, Victor Hugo carried French Romanticism into English prose through translation, expanding the novel’s scale, emotional intensity, and moral ambition. His historical vision, melodramatic ethics, and sympathy for outcasts reshaped Victorian narrative, teaching English fiction to unite social critique, grandeur, and epic structure into a morally charged form.
Birth of Victor Hugo (1802–1885) – The Romantic Who Enlarged English Narrative
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