You may be interested in this conversation going on at Collin Kelly's blog. There's lots of fret over questions such as what's the point of an MFA, who controls the poetry world, does it matter, etc. Why, I fret about those questions myself, though I haven't yet been able to formulate any sort of glib response to them. Nonetheless, as a poet without a master's degree or any academic connections, I do understand that I'll never get a seat at the "real" contemporary poetry table, despite having released two full-length collections with well-respected publishers. I don't always care, but sometimes I sigh.