"A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate"
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Barton’s line treats the literary journal less like a pedestal and more like an electrical circuit: meaning happens only when the current actually reaches someone. The “intended to connect” phrasing is quietly corrective, pushing back on the prestige-economy version of lit culture where journals become branding exercises, gatekeeping machines, or private salons with a glossy cover. He’s insisting on the mundane, radical purpose of the form: contact.
The word “mediate” does the real work. It refuses the fantasy that editors are neutral couriers, simply passing along genius to a grateful public. Mediation is interpretation, shaping, translation, even diplomacy. Editors choose what gets amplified, how it’s framed, what community it imagines into being. In that sense Barton is granting editors authority while also narrowing their moral job description: not to dominate the conversation, but to help it happen. Mediation suggests a third party in a relationship that could otherwise fail - writer too inward, reader too distant, language too coded, the cultural noise too loud.
Context matters: a poet talking about journals is talking about infrastructure. Poetry especially survives through small venues, volunteer labor, and tight networks where taste can calcify into clique. Barton’s formulation argues for a more porous ecology. The editor becomes a steward of attention, responsible for lowering the cost of entry on both sides - protecting the writer from indifference, protecting the reader from obscurity, and protecting the work from the ego games that so easily replace actual reading.
The word “mediate” does the real work. It refuses the fantasy that editors are neutral couriers, simply passing along genius to a grateful public. Mediation is interpretation, shaping, translation, even diplomacy. Editors choose what gets amplified, how it’s framed, what community it imagines into being. In that sense Barton is granting editors authority while also narrowing their moral job description: not to dominate the conversation, but to help it happen. Mediation suggests a third party in a relationship that could otherwise fail - writer too inward, reader too distant, language too coded, the cultural noise too loud.
Context matters: a poet talking about journals is talking about infrastructure. Poetry especially survives through small venues, volunteer labor, and tight networks where taste can calcify into clique. Barton’s formulation argues for a more porous ecology. The editor becomes a steward of attention, responsible for lowering the cost of entry on both sides - protecting the writer from indifference, protecting the reader from obscurity, and protecting the work from the ego games that so easily replace actual reading.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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