John Barton

The editor of The Malahat Review (whose table I had joined) expressed the view that I expect too much of poetry editors.

I wish now that I had thought of Pound putting blue ink on Eliot.  Or the need of an editor for John Clare.

My own assertions confounded these three: to burnish a key and to remove burs from a key and to use a bur to work metal.  And yet I insist that to buff a key is not to sand a key.  And burnish suggests the shiny new key, its ridged edges like brushed metal.  A new key is brushed, not sanded.

But perhaps even memory failed me, and the irritation of the sanded key is to be found in a recent number of The Fiddlehead ....

See: 'deburring brush' and deburring newly cut keys; dental burs; burr holes, trephine, trepan and other things we need about as much ...