[Tim McGrath]

"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."