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Salon has an interview with her today that more or less typifies how ghastly elitist and self-absorbed I find her personality, and also had me nodding my head in agreement at many points (and zoning out at others. The politics of the academy is one of the most boring topics in the world, in my opinion.)

Well, first of all, they better stop talking just to each other in those small groups of the like-minded. I used to like John Ashbery, for example, but he got addicted to critical adulation. Too many people want academic idolization. They want the prizes. I want the poets and all artists to address the general audience again: Stop addressing the like-minded true believers, cut out the partisan politics, stop thinking that the only people you can speak to are those who agree with you already. Writers and artists need to start addressing those who...

What irks me here is that, yes, while poets we know talk about not just talking to each other or preaching to the choir, she always has this blame the victim tone---as though it's only up to the artists to break the bubble, as though we can just burst through a void and be received, as though there isn't a corporatized, mediated structure making it very difficult to do this under years of programs that bring art to people continue to lose funding, and further, as if academic poets were the only ones going after awards and setting the tone (ignoring...