Rilke On the Flesh

It's February 1, which means we are only two months away from the start of a new edition of The Tattooed Poets Project, and I have begun assembling the first posts for this annual extravaganza.

What better way to acknowledge this looming event, but to post a poetic tattoo?

The following piece is one that I spotted at the end of last summer on Penn Plaza. Belonging to a young lady named Rosa, it has been one of my few remaining 2010 leftovers:

What I noticed first was not that this was a line of verse, but that it was placed on the body in an unusual way. Most lines of poetry, when manifested on flesh, are on the arms and wrist, or the lower legs and occasionally a back. This tattoo runs from the front of to her back, vertically climbing and descending from her shoulder.

The line is in German, and represents a piece from Rainier Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies.

Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich

Or, in context:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
Hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

 Those are the opening lines of the first elegy, translated by Stephen Mitchell.

Rosa didn't give me much insight as to why she had the line tattooed, but it is quite a powerful statement.

When I asked her who the artists was, she replied only that it was someone in Brooklyn that went under the name "The Milk Maid". This sounded familiar at the time, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Of course, I came to be reminded that The Milk Maid is the moniker of Joy Rumore, at Twelve 28 Tattoo, quite a wonderful artist, whose work has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Thanks to Rosa for sharing this lovely line of verse with us here on Tattoosday!

Jack Kerouac Back

This is an orphan post, what I refer to as a photo with no real story attached to it, as the individual who let me take the photo, never e-mailed me with any further details.

I shot the picture at the end of the Brooklyn Cyclones-Staten Island Yankees game at MCU Park in Coney Island.

The crowd was filing out, so a protracted conversation was not an option.

The woman who belongs to this tattoo, however, did allow me to take the photo and said it was a quote from Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

It's a slightly modified version of this phenomenal passage:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”

If you're reading this, Dear Contributor, please accept my thanks for allowing us to enjoy your tattoo here on Tattoosday, but contact me, please, to tell us more.

Cenk's Skeleton Tattoo Pays Homage to Yukio Mishima and St. Sebastian

I met Cenk where I meet so many Tattoosday volunteers, outside of Penn Station on the plaza adjacent to Madison Square Garden.

He shared this, one of his four tattoos:

This is an interpretation of the depiction of St. Sebastian, as seen by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima, one of Cenk's favorite writers. A variation of the St. Sebastian imagery graced one of the many covers of Mishima's Confessions of a Mask:


Mishima even posed for a publicity photo as the martyred St. Sebastian:


This piece was tattooed by Myles Karr at Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn. According to his website, he has since left Saved, and opened Three Kings Tattoo Parlor. Mr. Karr's work has appeared previously on Tattoosday here and here.


Thanks to Cenk for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Alexandra's Tattoo Asks "Whoooo ... Are ... You?"

I was walking through Penn Statiom in late August, when I stopped dead in my tracks after spotting this tattoo on the upper right section of Alexandra's back:


Tattoos are interesting to me, to begin with, but when they illustrate a work of literature, I am pleased to no end, even if the work in question is not necessarily one of my favorites.

One need not have read Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to recognize that this tattoo is based on that seminal work.

Initially, Alexandra shared a bit with me. She just moved to New York from Orlando, and is a big fan of literature, in general. She is "infatuated" with the story of Alice, and the "trippy, unique" universe of Lewis Carroll.

The scene depicted is Alice's encounter with the caterpillar, from the Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland. The caterpillar asks Alice, "Whooo ... are ... you?" This could be an innocent question, but Alexandra notes that this is also a basic philosophical question about humans, in general. Thus, the "W" formed by the smoke from the caterpillar's hookah, represents that seminal question, "Who....?"



In the weeks since I met her, Alexandra has become a fan of Tattoosday, and has shared more, including some photos of the tattoo in progress. She also elaborated a bit more about the whole experience of getting this, her first tattoo.

She directed me to this link here, where she blogs about her tattoo. She added to this, by telling me, via e-mail:

"I was actually scheduled to go and get the tattoo with another popular artist in the [Orlando] area, and was with a group of friends, one whom wanted to get her tattoo touched up. The artist I was trying to work with gave me a bit of the brush off, so we were told to come back later. So we headed down the road and found Fine Ink Studios. Barnett, the owner, had literally set up shop just 5 days prior. While my friend Ashlie was asking about her Fleur de Lys tattoo, Barnett had asked what I was going to leave to get. I told him about the caterpillar, and as professional as possible he told me, "Just so you know, I'd reeeeeally love to do that for you." I went back to the other store, something went wrong, and I decided to leave and go back to Barnett! Happy days, it turns out Barnett had ALSO been employed by Disney and actually had worked on the animation for the film Aladdin. That really sold me, and it was such an amazing 2 and a half hours. I spent the entire time singing Disney songs as loud as I could to get through the pain :)"

Thanks much to Alexandra for sharing so much about the tattoo. Welcome to the Tattoosday family!

Call for Submissions - Literary Tattoos

THE REST IS SILENCE:

Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide

Edited by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor


CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! We are seeking high quality photographs of your literary tattoos for an upcoming book. Send us your ink! Submissions are open to all kinds of literary tattoo work: quotations from your favorite writer, opening lines of novels, lines of verse, literary portraits or illustrations. From Shakespeare to Bukowski to The Little Prince in a Baobab tree, if it's a literary tattoo and its on your body, we want to see it.

All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it's based. We'd also like to read a few words about the tattoo's meaning to you -- why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. How much (or how little) you choose to say about your tattoo is up to you, but a paragraph or two should do the trick.

Please send clear digital images of the highest print quality possible to tattoolit@gmail.com. Pixel resolutions should be at least 1500 x 1200, or a minimum 300 dpi at 5 inches wide. Text should be included in the body of the email, not as an attached document. Also be sure to include one or more pieces of contact information, so we can let you know if you're going to be in the book.

High Culture Vs. Low Culture: Two of Sam's Tattoos

Sam has seven tattoos, but it was this one that first caught my eye:


Yes, that is an exclamation point (!) on the back of her neck and head, inked by Mony at Body Graphics Tattoo in Philadelphia.

So why an exclamation point? Sam explained that, in the video game Metal Gear Solid on the Nintendo System, an exclamation point appeared over a character's head when he was spotted by a villain. The programming was very basic, so when the technology developed to improve on the (!) appearing over the head, the makers of the game kept the symbol, and it became
somewhat camp.

Sam remarked that her nod to "low culture" is offset by this tattoo which is on her outer right arm:


I recognized the insignia immediately, having read Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 in college. Sam reminded me that this symbol is that of the muted post-horn, a key plot element in the novel.


This is her "high culture" tattoo to complement her video game punctuation mark.

Thanks again to Sam for sharing her interesting tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Dese'Rae Stage and Some Poetic Tulips

Last Wednesday (April 15), I was trying to distract myself from having my back tattooed, when my BlackBerry chirped and I found a wonderful e-mail in my inbox. A poet and photographer named Dese'Rae Stage had graced me with some photos of a few of her fifteen tattoos. What follows is my favorite of those pieces:

The first piece is based on Sylvia Plath's poem "Tulips":


The poem is below, with the lines extracted for the tattoo highlighted:

TULIPS

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ----
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ----
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

Dese'Rae explains the background of this tattoo:

"The interpretation is literal enough: it's a poem about suicide and I'd recently tried to commit suicide (I got the piece done back in November 2006 and the summer prior was particularly difficult). One of my oldest friends, Ryan Falcon, just happens to be a talented artist, so I took him a tiny line drawing of some tulips and a copy of the poem with the selected lines highlighted and told him to go to it. The only stencil he used was for the words. He drew a rough outline of the bulbs, but everyth ing else was free-handed. This piece is on my inner left calf."

For the sake of brevity, I am only posting this one tattoo, of the five Dese'Rae sent me. It is, in my opinion, the best of the tattoos she sent me. However, I may post more in the future, with her permission.

It should be noted that the artist behind this tattoo, the aforementioned Ryan Falcon, is based in Miami, Florida and works at Almost Famous Tattoo. Truly spectacular, and worth a second look:

Thanks to Dese'Rae for sharing her amazing tattoo with us here on Tattoosday, as well as sharing the deeply personal story that accompanies it.

Head over to BillyBlog to read one of her poems here.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Moira Egan's Literary Ink, A Little Bit of Ireland, All the Way from Rome

Today's tattoo comes to us from across the Atlantic, contributed by Moira Egan, a poet living in Rome, Italy:



Hers is a literary tattoo. Moira reports, it's:

"A page corner from the Book of Kells (an illuminated manuscript that's housed in Trinity College, Dublin), in this version, housed a couple of inches below my left clavicle. Little Vinnie of Little Vinnie's Tattoos in Maryland is the artist, and this was done on Memorial Day of 1993. In fact, Vinnie was kind enough to open the shop that day for me and my brother and a friend. A good way to Memorialize a day."

Moira added, "since I'm Irish-American, and a writer, well it seemed appropriate".

Indeed, please check out one of Moira's poems, both in English and Italian, over on BillyBlog.