one more reason to like sven birkerts

his candor, his insight, and his intellectual panache--never pretentious, always insightful, and stimulating down to the last word.

excerpt from his SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

" Still, I can’t get around it: For me editing means asserting my own taste as a kind of categorical imperative. I recognized quite early on (see Agni 57) that I would have to take the leap of trusting myself absolutely. I worried, naturally—still do—that this was the most deluded kind of solipsism, but I couldn’t see any alternative, unless it was to make the journal some sort of literary sampler, a potpourri of expressions, modes, and aesthetic outlooks.

But what would be the point of that? Why clap covers around the undifferentiated swirl that is already all around us? A literary magazine, I think, ought to declare a particular brand of excellence and seek to rally adherents, the ultimate goal being the conquest of the world by that excellence. Ha! As for the accusation of hubris, isn’t this what we all do as writers: look for the will to emboss our idiosyncratic vision of things onto the page? Maybe the editor is just the writer posing in a public face. "

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE ON AGNI