Two years old at this point, but still a rare and fascinating look at one of my favorite poets: Richard Siken interviews Albert Goldbarth. The interview focuses on Goldbarth’s collection of vintage toys, but from there it leads into the connections between collecting and writing.

I must say first, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about the line of agreement or even the line of distinction between my writing and this collection. They’re both deep pleasures for me—the writing even more so, of course. I’m sure there must be overlap, but I’ve never been one who sits around and very consciously becomes an archaeologist or a psychologist or a deconstructor of his own aesthetic life. I don’t sit around and try to self-articulate the details: the where, the why, and the how. It seems to me that there’s probably more likeness between some of the spirit behind the writing and some of the spirit behind the collecting than there is difference. If I wanted to, I could think of many of my poems or essays as display cases of objects, also ideas, also human needs and human pleasures and human perils, that have been arranged for a specific aesthetic effect.

The photos are great as well. Goldbarth has transformed his entire dining room into a museum.