Life & Wisdom Quote by John Barton

Barton is calling out a quiet tyranny: the way readers recruit a text to prosecute their own biases, then congratulate themselves for “having an opinion.” The line has the clipped authority of a workshop note, but its target is cultural, not merely technical. “Allow their prejudices to blind them” frames prejudice as a choice, or at least a habit you can keep indulging. It’s less a moral scolding than a diagnosis of how interpretation gets wrecked before it even begins.

The second sentence pivots from accusation to standard-setting. “A good reader” is a deliberately loaded phrase in a literary culture that often treats reading as pure personal reaction. Barton argues that instinctive responses aren’t sacred; they’re raw material. The key word is “disregard”: not repress, not deny, but set aside when they’re “inappropriate” to the work’s demands. That qualifier matters. He’s not asking for sterile neutrality or the fantasy of objectivity. He’s arguing for discipline: the ability to notice when you’re reacting to what the text triggers in you rather than what it’s actually doing.

As a poet, Barton knows how much meaning lives in tone, ambiguity, and the unsaid. Prejudice flattens that complexity into a yes/no verdict. The subtext is almost political without naming politics: a defense of interpretive humility in an era that rewards hot takes. Good reading becomes an ethical practice, a refusal to let your quickest judgment be the loudest one.