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.