Steve Kronen was in the Doors concert the night Jim Morrison was arrested for exposing himself. He also witnessed, during the Elian fiasco, Black men and women march with Anglos under a Confederate flag so they could denigrate Cubans together. For him, Miami is as angry as it is beautiful. Poetry helps him to define himself and occupy himself while on the planet. But he's not so sure of poetry's value, other than the "idiosyncratic pleasure" it may give a writer or reader. Still, he is obsessed by it and by questions concerning the nature of poetry and things like how authority is commanded in a poem. His work has appeared in Smartish Pace, The New Republic and a new book, Splendor, will be published by BOA Editions. He's had a chapbook of poems appear in the online magazine The Drunken Boat. When he's not writing poetry, he works as a reference librarian at the Winter Park Public Library, spends time with his wife, the novelist Ivonne Lamazares (The Sugar Island; Houghton Mifflin) and their daughter Sophie. His first book, Empirical Evidence, is available via Georgia Press  or online through Powell's, Amazon, BN.com, etc.