Welcome to the first of our weekend specials this summer. With our video poetry shoots stymied by Covid, Mark's put together an anthology of some favorite Mark Steyn Show poems of recent months, and matched them to some appropriate musical interludes. The poets span the last three hundred years, and include the famous, the once famous, and the eternally obscure.
We hope this half-hour of words and music is a pleasant break from the civilizational assault all around this Sunday. To listen, simply click above.
If you'd like to catch up with earlier poems in the series, you can find them on our Sunday Poems home page. As with Tales for Our Time and our music specials and The Mark Steyn Show, we've archived Mark's poetry picks in an easy-to-access Netflix-style tile format that we hope makes it the work of moments to prowl around and alight on something that piques your interest of a weekend, whether Kipling or Keats.
Steyn's Sunday Poem is made possible by members of The Mark Steyn Club. Mark launched the Steyn Club over three years ago, and we're immensely heartened by all the longtime SteynOnline regulars - from Fargo to Fiji, Madrid to Malaysia, West Virginia to Witless Bay - who've signed up to be a part of it. Membership in The Mark Steyn Club also comes with non-poetic benefits, including:
~Our latest audio adventure in Tales for Our Time, and its three dozen thrilling predecessors;
~Other audio series on pertinent topics, such as last year's nightly installments of Climate Change: The Facts;
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with Mark;
~Transcript and audio versions of Mark's Mailbox, The Mark Steyn Show, and other video content;
~Advance booking for Mark's live appearances around the world, assuming such things are ever again permitted;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~The opportunity to join Steyn and his guests on our annual Mark Steyn Cruise, likewise assuming we are ever again permitted to sail;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here. And for our special Gift Membership see here. Oh, and by the way, that Steyn cruise always includes a live performance of a Sunday Poem.
One other benefit to Club Membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, whether you like this feature or consider Mark's poem readings a bust, then feel free to comment away below. Please do stay on topic on all our comment threads, because that's the way to keep them focused and readable. With that caution, have at it (in verse, if you wish).
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9 Member Comments
Women often died in childbirth, even up to the 1950's. I think that formed the way those societies thought about death, loss and risk. Mrs Jerauld's poem is so heartbreaking when you know her future.
Thank you Mark, this was a much needed tonic for the soul. When I got up this morning I switched on the news and then promptly switched it back off again and spent the day outside working in the garden. When I came back in and found this in my inbox it made my day. I enjoy all of the content on your website but the music and poems are my favorites. How wonderful to enjoy them together. I've only been a club member for a little over a month and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you for being a respite from this increasingly crazy year.
Mark replies:
Thank you, Jacqueline. Great to have you with us, and hope you enjoy it.
Poetry and music! Who could ask for a better combination as antidotes to the current sociopolitical cacophany. The selections were perfect, all the more so with your complementary commentary. The only thing better would be your reading in video and a chance to gaze on the river behind you (the Connecticut?) during the music. Maybe one day....
Mark replies:
Our video poems will return, CBG. Never fear.
Thanks, all excellent. Will all the poems and music be posted for further study and listening? The Handel was great, the Mendelssohn was haunting, if not sublime.
I would have enjoyed it if it had gone on for an hour!
A truly fine way to close the weekend and begin a new week. Thanks as always, Mark.
Mark replies:
Thank you, Stanley. Very kind of you.
What was that last piece of music, please?
Mark replies:
Mendelssohn, Wayne. The slow movement of his first violin sonata, written when he was eleven in the year (1820) that Mrs Jerauld died - so she certainly never heard it. But thank you for asking.
What was it about about the name Phillis, in the time of William III, Queen Anne and George I? I don't think I've ever met a Phillis. Did it just fit easily into poetic metre, or rhyme easily?
Henry Purcell left a terrific song to a Phillis, one of my favourite pieces by him. Phillis is a stone-cold beauty, who constantly adjusts her hairstyle, ignoring her every admirer, like a character out of Ovid. I'm not allowed to link to it, but there is an excellent performance of Purcell's song still on Youtube, until it gets shoved into a black hole. Search on "Phillis" and the name of the superb Dutch baritone, Maarten Koningsberger. Wonderful music.
Thank you, I was going to ask the same thing! I loved all of the musical selections, but as a violinist, I was particularly intrigued by that one. Now that I know, I'm thinking, "Of course! Who else but Mendelssohn could have come up with that melody?"
Mark replies:
That's true, Jennifer. And that's Mendelssohn at eleven years old...
While listening I knew I'd want to hear it more of it, so I ordered a CD. Maybe you will record it someday.