We launched The Mark Steyn Club just under a year ago, and on the eve of our first anniversary I'm 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. As I said at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone - all my columns, audio interviews, video content, all our movie features and songs of the week. None of it's going behind a paywall, because I want it out there in the world, being read and heard and viewed, and maybe changing an occasional mind somewhere along the way. And we're delighted to say that, since the birth of The Mark Steyn Club, this website now provides more free content each week than at any time in its fifteen-year history.
That said, we are introducing a few bonuses for our Club Members - not locking up our regular content, which will always be free, but admitting members to a few experimental features, such as participation rights in our Clubland Q&As live around the planet, the latest of which airs this Tuesday at 4pm North American Eastern Time; and also today's video divertissement - because it takes a real man to be secure enough to read poetry on camera.
Today's poem comes by way of request from Mike Burke, a first-weekend Founding Member from Virginia. Tomorrow, April 30th, Mike and his wife Jenny celebrate their thirtieth anniversary - and the title of this poem is engraved on the wedding band that his bride has worn all these years. "Jenny Kiss'd Me" is a famous poem by a not so famous poet, Leigh Hunt. But, since its first publication in 1838, it has become one of the most anthologized works in the English language. In this video I discuss the background to the poem, connect it to a previous Sunday poem "Ozymandias", and talk about the real-life Jenny who inspired it - Jane Welsh Carlyle (top right). To watch (or hear) "Jenny Kiss'd Me", prefaced by my introduction, please click here and log-in.
Our Sunday Poem series isn't really a request slot, but we're in an indulgent mood in these days before our first birthday, and feel particularly grateful to Mr and Mrs Burke and all our other Founding Members. Aside from the occasional request, this ongoing weekend poetry anthology was started for two reasons: First and most obviously, if it turns out that poetry on TV is where the big bucks are, I'll look like a genius. And, if that's not the case, then more modestly I'd like to do my bit to keep some of this stuff in circulation - especially given the state of western education systems and the increasing brazenness of the new barbarians. As you might have noticed from recent asides in print and on air, I'm concerned about the erasure, in the broadest sense, of our cultural inheritance - the once widely recognized allusions that fewer and fewer people know. I never thought I had a spectacular education, but by the time I was a teenager I had more lines of English verse bobbing around in my head than my own kids do. And I think that's a loss. As I said when we introduced our audio series Tales for Our Time, if it turns out a total stinkeroo, we shall never speak of it again. But, if it avoids stinkeroo status, we may put it on DVD or some digital download format at Amazon. So bear with us, because it's a work in progress.
If you'd like to catch up on earlier poems in the series, you can find "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold here, and Kipling's "Recessional" here.
For verse of a rather different kind, join me this evening for a special pre-birthday edition of Steyn's Song of the Week. And, as I mentioned above, on Tuesday I'll be hosting another Clubland Q&A, taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 4pm North American Eastern Time.
Membership in The Mark Steyn Club does come with some non-poetic benefits, including:
~Our nightly radio serial Tales for Our Time, the fourteenth of which comes up in May;
~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 yours truly, the latest of which will air this Tuesday;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, SteynPosts, and other video content, including today's poem;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~A special Steyn Club event we'll be announcing during our first-anniversary observances;
~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 limited-time Gift Membership see here.
One other benefit to Club Membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you like or dislike this brand new feature, or consider my poem reading a bust, then feel free to comment away below. I weigh in on the comment threads myself from time to time, but sparingly - because it's mainly your turf, so have at it (in verse, if you wish).
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15 Member Comments
Just started listening to Sunday Poems & Tales for our Time. Embarrassing to have my procrastination reveled so starkly by today's date (not April 2018), but I must thank Mark for this wonderful WONDERFUL poem. It was one of my Dad's favorite poems & he could never recite it without choking up. Nor can I!
The information about Leigh Hunt, historical timeline, poetry mechanics, song lyrics, geography, etc. all fascinating. Jane Carlyle was The Jenny?!!? Mark is truly a gift to the world. Do
Mark replies:
Thank you, Barbara - and glad you got around to our Poems and Tales: Jenny Kiss'd Me is a great place to start.
I'm saving this to listen to at the end of my treatment tomorrow. Should be a nice way to finish off the drudgery.
Thanks for the reminder of the MSC anniversary, as my Club membership is imminently due. I checked the box so that SteynOnline remembers me, which means I don't login at the top right corner anymore and that is where the expiry date is listed. Perhaps an email reminder of expiry would be helpful for some. Just a thought.
It's been a great year with wonderful content and a fabulous community. Keep on keeping on Mark.
The Mark Steyn Club is the joyous exception to Groucho's rule of not wanting to be in any club that would have you as a member. Steyn doth bestride the wide world of entertainment, politics, and philosophy like a Colossus. My fellow members are a learned and convivial bunch. The bar is well stocked and the furnishings quite comfy.
Speaking of that, I salute the website itself. I appreciate its design and functionality. Most of all, I appreciate the total absence of annoying pop-up ads and audio that suddenly comes on and makes you search all over the place to find its source. Yes, the website is very well done.
Finally, if I may suggest a poem, I suggest Poe's "The Bells". I'd love to hear Mark's interpretation and, after all, how often do you get to use the word "tintinnabulation"?
"Great art floats free...."
Yes, it's a beautiful poem that "perfectly distills... a moment of wonder", and to learn about the fascinating details of "the circumstances of its creation" is rare indeed. You're a true Civilisationist, in every sense of the word, Mark.
The poem is new to me, but I remember Leigh Hunt for his words on the premiere of Haydn's Creation, to the effect that no one could have conceived the origin of the world conveyed in such vividness and splendor by wood and horsehair and skins. (I can't find the quotation at the moment, but it was a lot better than that.)
This was excellent. Thank you. Rush Limbaugh was discussing his top-ten favorite women's names last week, and someone called and said over time he'd been jotting them down as Rush mentioned them, and presented his list of more than ten. "Jenny" was prominent, with a variant that, I think, was "Jenna".
Growing up, my best friend was a year older than I. At age 11, he had a newspaper route. I had been familiar with doing work at home, but here was an intriguing idea: work in exchange for pay. Thus began my working life, age 10. Apparently, my healthy respect for money made my parents think I was going to be a banker. I enjoy earning money and spending it as much as anyone, but as time's gone on, money has diminished in importance - to the point of having an aversion to the gaudiness it can buy - while my interest in investing, in things like the heritage England apparently doesn't want, has compounded.
One evening, while I was at my grandparents' house, my dad called to say that my childhood best friend, driving home from work, had almost been killed, by a wrong-way drunk driver on I-15 near Tropicana Ave in Las Vegas, and was in a coma. My gramps, who loved people and business, also loved to bet on sports, He did so every weekend, giving him a stake in the games on TV. I explained to him what had happened, and that I'd be driving across the desert to Las Vegas the next day. While he listened, his love for betting crept in, and he asked me if I couldn't place a few bets for him at the sportsbook of his favorite casino, which eventually I did. My friend miraculously woke up from the coma after ten days and survived.
When Indian casino gambling went on the ballot in California, my gramps thought it'd pass by two-thirds. I didn't, and at his suggestion, we bet on it. It fell a few points short and I noticed he didn't pay up.
Not indicting my gramps here, but it takes a great deal of character to handle money. Money can be like a drug. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something very, very wrong with pursuing money only for money's sake. It can become a way of elevating oneself to dehumanizing levels. The 14 hours a night Stephen Paddock spent obsessively gambling on video machines might not be irrelevant to his mass murder.
"The love of money is the root of all evil," according to the Bible. Warren Buffett lives simply and unostentatiously and reinvests in good, and Bill Gates funds solutions, so the greatest wealth can be the wisest instruments.
I've noticed, with some sadness on my part, that Mark reinvests in the civilization; in us; in what we will leave behind. The book sales go to support Mann's case against him. Life cannot be just about the here and now. It has to count for something beyond, and I think it counts for far more than we know.
I had a paper route at a tender age as well. We lived in a very modest (to put it nicely) part of town so there were few subscribers meaning that the route covered a fairly large area in order to make it profitable. It was an evening paper so every day, after school and before music practice and homework, rain or shine or snow, I had to be out there. No option to take my bicycle as it could easily have been stolen in the 30 seconds left at the curb, I walked the entire route. I had to collect the payments and sometimes there were deadbeats that refused to answer the door or people who moved away with two weeks owing as they promised to pay the next week on collection day, but by then were gone. There were also some wonderful people who were kind and very generous to me during the holidays and one old man who knew that I was collecting rare (to me) coins who gave me a few nice ones and a US Bi-Centennial $2 bill, which although not worth much, it was the jewel of my collection even though I had bills from the 1940's and coins from the 1910's. Unfortunately, someone later stole my whole collection and the hand-painted "strong box" in which it was stored. They told me they traded it for drugs.
I learned a lot about people from that paper route. You're right about character and handling money. I look at politicians with a gimlet eye for good reason. I'm indignant when I'm told whether they are going to let me keep more of my own money, or not.
I'm 58, and it's surprising how often I recite lines of poetry as a commentary on something happening. Few people do that anymore. When I was young, I had to learn more poetry than children do today in school, but I also read it for myself. Not a solid diet of it, but it was something I could resort to just for entertainment. Mark is right, if we don't exert ourselves, this will vanish from the popular mind.
The song posts are helpful in the same effort. So few songs now have anything resembling a lyric worth remembering. I still remember Mark's column on "Bongo-Bongo-Bongo", which I actually looked up and learned to sing as a result! My husband and I were watching an old Donald O'Connor/Janet Leigh movie called "Walking My Baby Back Home", which contained an outrageously un-PC song called "Hi Lee, Hi Lo". I went on eBay and got a copy of the sheet music for a song (ha!). Now I can play it on the piano.
I used to have books with titles like "The Fireside Book of American Folk Songs" and "The Golden Book of Popular Songs". Someone should collect all these crazy outdated popular songs and publish "The Big Awful Book of Deplorable Songs".
Hey Mark,
As one of your 'regulars' for more decades than I care to admit (as well as one of your 'far flung' followers), I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge you, your hard work, clear messages, brilliant and unique sense of humour, and the many knocks you take as the price you pay for speaking the truth.
Congratulations on the first anniversary of the MSC and I'm thrilled it's enabled you to be so successful and increase your output. As you say, this stuff NEEDS to get out into the world. Who knows, you might even have influenced Kanye!! ;-)
Thanks for all you do and thanks for giving me as many daily laughs as does my cat!! :-D
Your video was wonderful. I loved it all. "Jenny kissed me" is one of my favorite poems. A similar poem, perhaps my very favorite, is "It's all I have to bring today" by Emily Dickinson. To quote you: "Great art floats free of the circumstances of its creation." Could not be better said. In a discussion of "beauty" yesterday with some friends, I was a defender of that belief.
Fantastic! Mark, thank you so very much. What a special gift for me and my Jenny. I hope everyone gets the joy of having their own 'Jenny Kissed Me' moment. I'm older and wearier, but ever so grateful to have had 30 years with a fabulous and beautiful partner. Thank you for putting it words I could not. Wishing you and yours all the best! Mike
Fantastic! Mark, thank you so very much. What a special gift for me and my Jenny. I hope everyone gets the joy of having their own 'Jenny Kissed Me' moment. I'm older and wearier, but ever so grateful to have had 30 years with a fabulous and beautiful partner. Thank you for putting it words I could not. Wishing you and yours all the best! Mike
"Great art floats free of the circumstances of its creation." Mark's gift with words keeps me coming back. Does bad art sink into the abyss of forgotten dross?
Sorry Corkie, but bad art gets its own awards show with an abundance of self-congratulation and virtue signaling.
Bad art becomes a multi-billion dollar industry. Like Hollywood and most every recording label that exists today.