SALON's Laura Miller interviews NYT poetry critic David Orr.

http://www.salon.com/books/poetry/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2011/04/05/david_orr

Here's a fascinating passage from the interview:

You have a fascinating chapter, titled "In the Fishbowl," about the social and economic situation that professional poets work in. I have to say, the poetry world in itself can be daunting to the nonspecialist. You might tentatively mention a poet you like to an expert or a member of the poetry world, and they'll look at you as if you just gushed over a greeting card. You don't even want to admit to having any kind of taste because you're afraid it'll be the wrong taste.

I've been that kind of person before, and I'm ashamed of it.

I often write about the sociology of the poetry world, and some readers like it and some don't. I think that it's important to do because people don't know where poems come from. I find that when people do get a sense that poetry is written by human beings and that these human beings are under various pressures through the world that they inhabit, just like everyone else, usually people are much more sympathetic to poetry.

Really? Because my impression is that there is a lot of knee-jerk complaining about the poetry establishment, and that the people who make those complaints are not very sympathetic to the communal pressures of the poetry world. You hear a lot of gripes about how everybody knows everybody else and that there's a lot of log rolling.

Well, one of the things I want to show in that chapter is that the kind of behavior that those people complain about has been going on for a long, long time. A lot of really good poetry has arisen either in spite of or maybe because of that kind of behavior.

Poets (including great poets) have always been cliquish and have always fought with other poets.

Yes. I think it's useful for general readers to see that so that they see poetry as a human art, not as something that just arrives on a lightning bolt from the clouds.

There are people who don't like this, and who really cling to the idea that poetry should never talk about the dirty underside. But I find that a little familiarity with the dirty underside actually makes everyone more comfortable because otherwise you just sit around denying the reality.

Here's a review of Orr's book:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/beautiful-and-pointless-poetry_b_847197.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=607664,b=facebook