I think of my work as a form of constrained writing in that the titles are all chosen to work together in my shelves. You can think of them as a three-dimensional haiku in that the form is fixed–it’s a bookshelf– and I am trying to pack in as much meaning and humor as possible, given the constraints of the medium.

Like Significant Objects, my pieces are a response to the specificity of the books I collect, not just a riff on books as lumber, though I’ve done that, too. In fact, the idea occurred to me after reading Nicholson Baker’s essay, “Books as Furniture,” in the New Yorker. (He did not mean to be taken literally.) So perhaps you have brought the meme full circle here, adjacent to his slice about a meat thermometer.

–Jim