This awesome tattoo belongs to Molly:

This tattoo was inspired by a trip to Bread Loaf this summer, where I studied poetry with Ellen Bryant Voigt.  I have always admired the ways we can re-imagine poems outside of typical lineation, how poems can become sculptures and books can be objects of art with textures and breath.  A bit of fortune converged with my desire:  I have a dear friend in my MFA program whose husband happens to be a tattoo artist, and that husband just so wanted to spend some time on a letterpress, and I had just acquired a Kelsey platen press.  A trade was proposed, and Shawn designed the whole thing with wings in mind, something that would also resemble lungs and breathing and the lift of freedom at the end of Sharon Olds‘ oft-studied “I Go Back to May 1937.” The poem is there, on my arm, in its entirety.  Olds is my most beloved living poet, and this poem speaks to me with my own work–taking life experiences and professing:  “Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.”  Olds once said that poetry comes out of her lungs, and now I have this reminder, this collection of gorgeous language, that tells me again and again:  don’t forget to breathe, don’t forget who you are.

You can view Molly’s Flickr set for more pictures of the tattoo’s progress.

The tattoo was done by Shawn Hebrank of Identity Tattoo in Maplewood, Minnesota.

(88 votes, average: 4.53 out of 5)

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This tattoo belongs to P.

I spent many years in the Middle East as a child and developed a deep, fundamental love for the area, the countries, the people, and the poetry. Hafiz’s work always spoke to me with its beauty and depth, and I’d been searching for the right line to commit to my body. The imagery in this reminds me of the desert and hot, stormy nights.

The wind last night brought wind of my far-traveled love to me.
I, too, will give the wind my heart and what must be shall be.

Hafiz! Your amicable way has earned you what you yearn for.
Let every soul be sold to help a man of amity.

- Ghazal 98 by Hafiz

(33 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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This is Ed Casey’s Bukowski tattoo:

I’ve been a Bukowski fan ever since my pop got me started on his writing (at what was probably too early an age for such booze filled tales of debauchery). I used to have this poem printed out and stuck to my fridge to remind me that, all things considered, things are pretty ok. I thought and thought and thought about getting my first (and so far only) tattoo for years and when the time came there was really only one option.

there’s no other way:
8 or ten poems a
night.
in the sink
behind me are dishes
that haven’t been
washed in 2
weeks.
the sheets need
changing
and the bed is
unmade.
half the lights are
burned-out here.
it gets darker
and darker
(I have replacement
bulbs but can’t get them
out of their cardboard
wrapper.) Despite my
dirty shorts in the
bathtub
and the rest of my dirty
laundry on the
bedroom floor,
they haven’t
come for me yet
with their badges and their rules and their
numb ears. oh, them
and their caprice!
like the fox
I run with the hunted and
if I’m not the happiest
man on earth I’m surely the
luckiest man
alive.

- “my doom smiles at me” by Charles Bukowski, from the book The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain.

(68 votes, average: 4.12 out of 5)

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This is Benjamin’s tattoo:

My tattoo is from Walt Whitman.  The first printing of Leaves of Grass (and none of the subsequent printings) had a preface with the following quote:

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

I got this tattoo because the quote sums up my ethics very well, and I wanted to make those ethics a part of my body, plus the hope that it helps make my flesh a great poem.

(45 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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This is Sammuel’s tattoo:

i love the poem – the sentiment (ie- the contradiction that is love or that is ecstatic love).  the voice here can only be chaste when ravished.  and what does it mean to be ravished by god?  this picture was taken the night i had it done.

- Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God (Holy Sonnet XIV) by John Donne

(30 votes, average: 3.57 out of 5)

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“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are thin!']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

This is Callie’s tattoo:

This is a question asked by a man in the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot (my favorite poet).  In the poem, he tries over and over to muster up the courage to pursue his dreams, but his fears and doubts always stop him.  This is my personal reminder everyday, a way to constantly ask myself, “Am I brave enough to make a difference in the world?”  I want to be able to answer, “Yes.”

(52 votes, average: 4.19 out of 5)

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This is Tyler’s tattoo from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life“.

Life is real! Life is earnest
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

I got it because this poem has always spoken volumes to me and serves more or less as my maxim for living life day to day.

(42 votes, average: 3.52 out of 5)

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This is Tiffany’s tattoo:

I got the tattoo last spring, in honor of my husband, whose heart I carry in mine.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings, i carry your heart with me

(55 votes, average: 3.44 out of 5)

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This is Leyna’s tattoo.

It’s from Part I of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.  The entire stanza reads:

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of

beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and

come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

Leyna says:

… I thought better of tattooing that much obscenity on me. “Ecstatic and insatiate” seem to capture Ginsberg’s own vision of New York City, as well as the sentiment I feel as I begin my sixth (!) year living in Manhattan or an outter burough. I’m a huge fan of the beats and love having a piece of Ginsberg’s work.

Done by Derik @ Hand of Glory in Brooklyn

(43 votes, average: 3.58 out of 5)

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This is Stacey’s tattoo:

I originally came across the poem in one of my most beloved books, Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, so I have extra affection for it.

Dream Dust
Gather out of star-dust,
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust,
Not for sale.

- By Langston Hughes

(40 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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