Skeletons in the closet

I collect antique & rare books, as well as author's signatures but that's pretty tame. The Poetry Foundation, however, has been doing a series of interviews with poets who collect things and you'd be surprised by what you'd find in some poets' homes. For instance, Albert Goldbarth collects robots and Jeanne Marie Beaumont collects dolls. The most recent piece interviews Richard Silken and his collection of, wait for it, bones.

From The Poetry Foundation:

Most of the bones in my collection I have found; some of them have been presents. The one that looks the funniest was a present. It’s a manatee skull. It’s just a dodo of a skull, and a manatee is a dodo-looking animal. I love that. I have a Bengal tiger skull, lots of little tiny rodent bones, and skulls from owl kill—I have jars and jars of those. I have an entire cat skeleton, a whole jar of fish vertebra that are almost the same size—like poker chips—an alligator skull, a mountain lion skull, tens and tens of deer skulls, and several of the skulls from our horses. Not including the tiny ones, which would be hundreds, I have maybe 35 or 40 skulls. Some of them are hanging in the garage. The ones that are really beautiful and well cured are in the kitchen, or they’re on bookshelves. Some of them are just in boxes. I try to keep similar ones all together. I have a lot of coyote skulls and those are all together, though the lower jawbones are all mixed up. So some of them are really well taken care of and then some aren’t.

Read the full interview with Richard Silken here.