Byron's Rackrhyming

In Don Juan, Lord Byron parades a travesty of a poet, 'young bard, Rackrhyme, who had newly / Come out and glimmer'd as a six-weeks' star' (XIII, 84). 'Rack' is a structure on which to suspend various articles and, proceeding from this, a display case - say, a rhyme-chain, or the structure for it, a stanza. 'Rackrhyme' is a word of Byron's invention for this opportunistic poetaster, racking his brains and putting his readers to the rack, a practice to which Byron's now signature rhyme-play is a presumed antithesis, in wit and skill. Yet for all the flaunted difference, the poet of Don Juan is not averse to assembling an epic rack of wordplays, repetitions, recursions, and arresting homonyms. This essay angles into the currents and currency of Byron's own poetics of rackrhyming.