Lord Byron's Foot
 

Good news! Lord Byron's Foot by George Green -- winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize -- will be available any day now. See Amazon (where it can be pre-ordered) at http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Byrons-Fo...byron%27s+foot

George was in Tom Cable's prosody seminar with me at West Chester last year. I would say he is a total crack-up (in a good way), but that might be beneath the dignity of these grand pre-publication reviews posted at Amazon:

George Green’s poems are full of wit, lore, and extraordinary twists. They converse delightfully of cultures high and low, yet with a vision which recognizes in Warhol’s portraits “a frightful vacancy and transience,” and can see in twinkling Sirius “a loose bulb on the drunkard’s porch that flickers.” His constantly amusing discourse has an enriching darkness which transcends the comic. —Richard Wilbur

The poems of George Green, with their breadth of knowledge, their eloquence, their humor, their vitality, all incomparably orchestrated, are astonishing. He is one of the truly outstanding poets at work today. —Mark Strand

George Green is an ingenious poet who brings it all to the table—his erudition, his comic sense, an open heart, and an unerring feel for English prosody. —Billy Collins

Lord Byron’s Foot is worth the price of admission for the title poem alone, but every poem here has its surprises and pleasures. In George Green’s poems, Jimi Hendrix rubs shoulders with John Wilkes Booth, Pindar, and Maria Callas, to name a few. If this makes Green sound ironic and postmodern, that is misleading. Green treats his readers as though we were as cool, urbane, well-read, smart, and unpretentious as he is. He’s probably wrong, but how can we not be flattered and beguiled? —A. E. Stallings

And here is the title poem:

          Lord Byron's Foot

That day you sailed across the Adriatic,
wearing your scarlet jacket trimmed in gold,
you stood there on the quarter deck, beglamored,
but we were all distracted by your foot.
Your foot, your foot, your lordship’s gimpy foot,
your twisted, clubbed and clomping foot, your foot.

Well, Caroline went half-mad for your love,
but did she ever try to make you dance?
No, never, never, never would that happen;
no, never with your limping Lordship’s foot—
your foot, your foot, your lame and limping foot,
your limp and lumbering, plump and plodding foot.

We see you posing with your catamite,
a GQ fashion-spread from 1812,
but one shoe seems to differ from the other.
Is that the shoe that hides your hobbled foot?
Your foot, your foot, your game and gimping foot,
your halt and hobbled, clumped and clopping foot.

And why did Milbanke sue you for divorce?
T’was buggery? I really do doubt that.
It was your foot, and everybody knows it.
It’s all we think about—your stupid foot.
Your foot, your foot, your clumsy, clumping foot,
your limp and gimping, stupid, stubby foot.

And after you had swum the Hellesponte,
“A fin is better than a foot,” they’d say.
Behind your back they’d say, “a fin is better,”
meaning your Lordship’s foot was just a fin.
A fin, a fin, your foot was just a fin;
your flubbed and flumping foot was just a fin.

And when you went to Cavalchina, masked,
with Leporello’s list (only half male),
what were your friends all whispering about?
What had they been remembering—your foot?
Your foot, your foot, your halt and hampered foot.
Your hobbled, clubbed and clopping foot, your foot.

When Odevaere drew you on your deathbed,
with laurel on your alabaster brow,
he threw a blanket on your legs—but why?
Could it have been to cover up your foot?
Your foot, your foot, your pinched and palsied foot,
your crimped and clumping, gimped, galumphing foot.

It’s best if we just contemplate your bust,
a bust by Thorvaldson or Bartolini,
and why is that you ask, and why is that?
So no one has to see your friggin’ foot,
your foot, your foot, your clomping monster foot,
your foot, your foot, your foot, your foot, your foot!
     
     

Removing foot from my mouth....

George will often come to Carmine Street Metrics and lurk at the bar with Josh Mehigan. Sometimes he will hit the open mic! Once he featured. So, we've heard the foot, the twisted, clubbed, clomping, limp and lumbering, plump and plodding foot. Looking forward to the book. Sometimes Josh hits the open mic, and he features...Sunday! New. York. City!!!!!

Time to be the bad guy again. I have nothing at all against Mr. Green. I've been at a bar restaurant at a table that included him with others and we had fun, and I've heard him read this title poem twice in person.

However, each time I was absolutely unable to understand why he was so focused on a man's physical deformity. It's not like Byron could change his body. I hesitate to say what I thought of this poem. But I reject it. Not funny. Sorry.

Not the poem I expected at all, and all the better for it.

Best,

Ed

P.S. And yes, it is wildly inappropriate, but appropriately so. It's so wrong it's right.

There you go again, pouring oil on the gasoline. I'm outta here.

I would say this, Allen, though it's only a personal interpretation. The narrator's focus on the man's physical deformity says volumes about how we think about people, and much about the narrator. To me, it says nothing about Byron himself, or his physical peculiarity. Byron is so clearly a genius that focusing on his foot is comically absurd. It's like focusing on Einstein's mustache. This is not to say you should agree with this view of things, only to say that is how I read the poem.

Ed

P.S. If Byron was alive and it was possible to hurt him with such a poem, or even to hurt his living relatives, I would think differently. But Byron is effectively immortal and impervious at this point, or so I feel.

Against my will I'm here.

The only thing we should ever remember about the Paralympics participants is how gimpy they are, eh?

And Franklin Roosevelt's wheelchair. Wow, there's a real funny.

Outta here. You won't change my mind. I've thought it over from about every angle known to humankind, including camp.

But... am I reading this poem upside-down? I've never heard this before or seen the poet deliver it but as I read it I felt that little bubble gathering in my throat that finally burst in a whispered - yesss.

Because that's what we do. That's what our media reinforce, day in, day out. Sometimes in an attitude of spurious "understanding". Great poet. Shame about the foot. Substitute name/negative element as necessary.

In the US you have surely had issues obscured by idiots concentrating on something that should be an irrelevance? It happens here a lot. Byron himself also capitalised on it to some extent.

I don't think this is merely "funny". I read it as a clever, tongue-in-cheek piece of pure irony. Although I smiled as I read it, I found it angry, moving and, most importantly, thought-provoking. To me, it says exactly the same as Allen's more direct message. A legitimate use of poetry, I feel.

I believe the humor in the poem lies in the realization that damned foot foot foot was most likely echoing in Byron's own head, that we are fashioned by our own insecurities, however politely repressed. The insistent rudeness of the poem is a burlesque antidote to the repression that causes said insecurities to bubble up in other less conscious and perhaps more harmfully distortive ways. Averted eyes are not honest seers. There is quite a difference between this poem and, say, some of the nasty diatribes written by his enemies about Pope's dwarfishness. This is cathartic for all involved, not mean-spirited at all. It seems to me a knowing but tender commentary on the Romantic in general, and how it compensates for life's unjust ill's.

Nemo

And, technically, this is a poem in which the humor and irony work through accretion. Quite often a stand-up comic will tell a joke that is somehow offensive or just simply not funny. But by retelling it or piling on the same simple, true, and disturbing point, the teller strips the audience of whatever social or political prophylactic caused the averted eye. It become hilarious. This poem isn't a stand-up routine or a joke. Nor is it finally offensive. But it is very funny and disturbing and revealing when George reads it. The accretive effect works when reading it on the page/screen as well, I think. It unvarnishes through build-up.

I find it odd that while other recent pieces have been - not inappropriately - criticised for lack of subtlety in developing satire, this foot-banging piece attracts such igenious and elaborate explanations of quality. The poem has a neat idea, on the general application of which Ann is entirely right, and the notion is also made all the more telling because of the double meaning of the poem's title. However, it then flogs the conceit to death, rather as Rick suggests stand-up comics do. Not, in my book, a flattering comparison - being bludgeoned into mirth seeming inherently unlikely.

Of course, I don't enjoy the advantage of having met and heard the poet's performance, which seems to weigh heavily with some of these crits - so what do I know. Nothing really except that here, as elsewhere in lit crit, there seems to be a multiplicity of standards and I'm not sure that the disparity here is one that is justified.

It's hard to argue with a nonspecific assessment that criticisms of poems have been inconsistent and unfair: they sometimes -- perhaps frequently -- are. But poems are not commodities, all exactly the same, and critics have their sharp and blurry days, so I'm not sure how far this observation drives discussion of Lord Byron's Foot; which, although not my favorite poem in all the world, I find very funny, because (or so I feel) it pokes savage fun at the narrator's inappropriate obsession. Your mileage may vary, though: isn't that often the case?

Best,

Ed

Agree with Nemo, above. Byron, who was extremely handsome when his weight was under control, was much more obsessed with his lame foot than anybody else was. Quite obviously it did him no harm with the ladies. I see this poem as a kind of projection (are they all thinking about my FOOT?) & as good a snapshot of Byron's mind as any other.

George's book is now available from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Byrons-Fo.../dp/1587314770

For some reason it is not available on St. Augustine Press's website. Nor does New Criterion link it, though it is the winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize for 2012. If you prefer to patronize Barnes & Noble, it is available there for $159.64! http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lord...een/1113968669

Slam Night in New York
 

"Lord Byron's Foot" repeats the word "foot" almost 50 times in seven short stanzas. Some things that don't gain by repetition are jokes (unless you're a preschooler) and getting hit in the head with a hammer. And that's what this poem felt like--an assault. Like being clubbed to death by a club foot. Some people will think this is funny. It will play to a certain crowd, a crowd that is loud and knowing and primed to laugh at all the right places.

This is the same crowd that hooted Emily Dickinson off the stage for being meek and mousy. It was more receptive to Byron, who knows how to ham it up, who understands that performance poetry is more performance than poetry. But then there is another Byron, the one who, at the end of the night, goes home and whispers his best stuff into the muse's ear. The one who, despite his resentment of Keats, knows as well as anyone that "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."

Did George kill your dog or something, Tim, to cause you to resurrect a year-old thread about a non-member?

No, I'm new to the thread, the site, and the poem. I just stumbled onto it. But I've always been a little slow.

This thread resurfaces at an opportune time. Green’s book has won the 2014 Poets’ Prize, and the award ceremony is tomorrow (May 1).

The discussion of the book’s title poem is of considerable interest to me, since I have some experience, in both poetry and stand-up comedy, with writing/performing material that some people find offensive even though it’s perfectly obvious to me that there’s good reason not to. Although I don’t think the poem is mind-blowingly hilarious, it’s not the least bit reprehensible. Glowering at it as if it were nothing but an exercise in mockery of physical disability is just plain dumb.

Of course it’s OK to write lightheartedly about Byron’s club foot. Same deal with Milton’s blindness and Coleridge’s opium addiction. (Even Plath’s suicide, I would say, although some might not choose to follow me that deep into the shadows of questionable taste.) Those realities aren’t the most important things about the poets in question, but they are the Stuff That Everybody Knows, just as everybody knows William Howard Taft was the fattest U.S. president, even if they don’t know much at all about his political career. And when you’re writing about somebody in his capacity as a celebrity, it makes perfect sense to focus on the Stuff That Everybody Knows, since that’s a big part of what celebrity is all about.

Really an excellent book. George Green is a delightful metrist, comic and journalist of the age. A non-member but far from unknown. Congratulations to him on the prize!

The foot poem follows one of Nemo Hill's strictures on satire. Mock thyself.

But the very best of George Green, for all his genius as a thinker and writer, is to hear him live. His delivery is impeccable. It's a great deal funnier from the stage than on the page. I could say why but I don't want to ruin it for anyone. Just hear him live!

And I don't think "Lord Byron's Foot" is even the funniest or darkest of the poems in the book. Buy the book! I did, and now I can't find it. :rolleyes:

Funny/odd to find this thread here today as I'd read only this morning an excellent essay posted at the Poetry Foundation website on this very book, by Austin Allen, titled Rumors of the Stars.

Dean Peterson: I migrated here from the same site, just a few short clicks away.

Terese Coe and Bill Carpenter: I'm sure that Green can vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night.

Chris O'Carroll: Fix your gaze on Emily Dickinson, a ten foot poet among inchlings.

Good for you, Mr. Tice (and Mr. McGrath), for speaking the truth – you’re not “the bad guy” at all. Quite the opposite, sir. “Lord Byron’s Foot” is about as amusing as one of Jerry Lewis's "funny" routines, at the cruel expense of those with disabilities. What is funny, a regular laff riot in fact, are the various defenses of "Lord Byron's Foot" proffered in this thread:

(“Byron is so clearly a genius that focusing on his foot is comically absurd. It's like focusing on Einstein's mustache [sic].” Really, I didn’t realize that Mr. Einstein’s moustache was a congenital deformity, particularly one that could not be treated in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.) (“This [“Lord Byron’s Foot”] is cathartic for all involved, not mean-spirited at all.” “for all involved”? Funny, I don’t recall reading where George Gordon Byron said this POS was “cathartic” for him.) (Or my favorite: “[i]t [“Lord Byron’s Foot”] pokes savage fun at the narrator's inappropriate obsession.” Ah, yes, it’s the narrator whom the poet is poking “savage fun” at!, not Lord Byron suffering his whole life long from having a clubfoot – that has nothing to do with anything. Please be mindful that it’s the poem’s narrator who is the butt of Mr. Green’s déclassé thrashing about, not Lord Byron. In fact, since it IS the narrator who’s the butt of Mr. Green’s cheap shots, we could erase any references whatsoever to Lord Byron’s club foot from Mr. Green’s verse. Right?) (“Byron, who was extremely handsome when his weight was under control, was much more obsessed with his lame foot than anybody else was.” Uh huh, since Bryon was handsome and kept his weight down (which has what to do with what?), and he was obsessed with his lame foot, that makes it hunky dory for some cut-rate schadenfreude addict to dash off a few stanzas of doggerel making fun of that alleged obsession? Except for one little detail – Byron was embarrassed and humiliated by his congenital deformity, and from that arose any putative obsession with it – all the more reason that anyone evincing the slightest sensitivity and compassion about such, would not be jumping and climbing all over other cruel-is-cool, pom pom girls and boys to champion some drivel, wholly focused upon taking cheap shots at that dead writer’s handicap. Bryon’s obsession with his handicap is understandable; Mr. Green’s narrator’s obsession with Lord Byron’s handicap is gratuitously cruel – a subtle distinction, I realize, but one most adults as well as many children are capable of grasping.)

Perhaps, since Mr. Green’s poem is ever so “ironic” and “tongue-in-cheek,” Mr. Lewis's routines at the expense of the disabled were ever-so ironic and tongue-in-cheek as well. Or presumably every time some younger version of Mr. Green out on a playground at recess mimics a classmate who's disabled for his other classmates’ dysfunctional viewing and listening pleasure, that's probably to be taken as ironic, too. Sure thing.

(Here’s some irony for you: I have happened to catch Mr. Green reading, and if someone were so inclined, he or she might dash off a bit of doggie-pooh doggerel in the manner of Mr. Green's "Lord Byron's Foot" -- having an “ironic” field day at the expense of one of Mr. Green's vocal, shall we say?? quirks. Schadenfreude -- the gift that keeps on giving.)

Well, talking of obsessiveness (as we were, seven months ago)...

Keep in mind that, also like Jerry Lewis, George Green has been hosting an annual telethon for decades.

Humor's a very subjective thing. There are plenty of things that other people find hilarious, that I find hurtful or offensive. (And, sadly, vice versa.)

[Egotisitical blather deleted]

May we all manage to surround ourselves with people who appreciate and share our particular brand of humor, whatever it may be.

Happy holidays to all.

Agreed. I can't quite understand the humor or interest in the poem.

It's one of those things one kind of gets or doesn't as far as personal enjoyment, but just because I never listen to bebop for pleasure and find jazzhole culture more than mildly reprehensible doesn't mean that John Coltrane wasn't a bit of a genius. That said, some of the... ahem... vehemence of the anti- crowd seems a bit much. Granted, George is a friend, but he's not some overhyped dip$#!t, but rather a guy who really has paid his dues.

I agree, Quincy, that one either gets it or one doesn't, and there is no point in insisting to someone that something is funny if they don't think it is. But one point that has been made over and over but which is still worth repeating, and that is that the joke is not on Byron. Nor on his foot.

Absolutely, and if I failed to reiterate that point, it's because others did so quite ably. Quite a while back.

There's some humor I'll never understand. For example, some folks find it hilarious to dredge up divisive threads like this one, and get people all worked up about them over and over. It's ever so droll to troll...especially with your ONE post ever to Eratosphere.

Actually, I was told about this thread by someone else, who had posted on Eratosphere. I had been told about this thread regarding Mr. Green's poem -- and given some idea of the comments, and so I posted my own.

The thread did not strike me as "divisive," or not nearly divisive enough -- if anything, most commenters seem to find Mr. Green's poem as utterly inoffensive as certain individuals where I was raised (the Midwest and the South) continue to find "humor" at the expense of blacks utterly inoffensive.

And I had no idea there was a pecking order, based upon how many posts one has made to Eratosphere. Good to know!

It's never an excellent idea to charge aggressively into a strange and new place armed with nothing but the vehemence of one's a priori opinions.

Nemo

Mark, I am sorry for mischaracterizing you as a troll, if your intent was actually to foster compassion and generosity around here.

However, just as my "I suspect a troll" post didn't exactly endear me to you, the vituperative tone of your first post was not exactly conducive to fostering compassion and generosity around here.

Personally, I don't find the poem funny. But I don't think that those who do are as bad as the narrator--i.e., shallow and petty and mean-spirited.

Laughter is one of many normal human responses to absurdities like injustice and suffering. Anger is another. People find lots of things funny that I find infuriating. That doesn't mean they're insensitive, cruel people--they just respond to some absurdities in a different way than I do.

I see an important difference between the person startled into laughter by the absurdity of outrageous insensitivity and injustice, and the person who laughs because he or she enjoys others' suffering. I hope you do, too.

Beautifully put, Julie.