Schubert (with the volume turned up)

Steven Ratiner is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including his newest chapbook Button, Button (OpenEyes Press), a collaboration with Mary Cain. He is also the editor of Giving Their Word: Conversations with Contemporary Poets (University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), which includes conversations with Seamus Heaney, Charles Simic, and Mary Oliver, along with the last full-length interview with Bill Stafford before his passing. Ratiner’s work has appeared in Parnassus , Agni , Hanging Loose , Poet Lore , Salamander , Quarterly Literary Review Singapore , and Poetry Australia . He has written about poetry for The Christian Science Monitor , The San Francisco Chronicle , and currently reviews for The Washington Post . Photo by David Andrews