> I can't imagine that most folks are surprised by the general shape of most defun statements.

The general shape of a LOOP expression is just a list of symbols and lists. A complicated LOOP expression that uses many features at once doesn't end up looking very Lispy, but a shorter one like (loop :repeat 10 :do (print 'hello)) shouldn't look at all foreign, especially if you write the keywords as keywords, which many people do.

I guess when people talk about the regularity of Lisp syntax, I think they usually mean that (op ...args) applies the operator OP to the list ARGS. LOOP obeys this very well: the only LOOP syntax I can think of that breaks it is `using (hash-key k)` or with HASH-VALUE. Universally accepted macros break this rule all the time, though. By shoving everything into lists, they totally abandon trying to keep with the (op ...args) form. If you see that regularity as a great advantage of Lisp's, then it seems like you should be much more bothered by the more "mundane" macros than you should be by LOOP.

    (loop :for i :below 10 :do (print i))

Is less "syntax-breaking" than:

    (dotimes (i 10) (print i))