The Tattooed Poets Project: Caroline Malone's Trio of Intimate Tattoos

Today's tattooed poet is Caroline Malone. She was kind enough to offer not one, but three, of her tattoos for our enjoyment.

Here they are, in her own words:

"Alien cat was my first tattoo in 2006.


I had always told myself I would never get a tattoo, but then I met someone, someone who turned out to be my sweetheart, who had a tattoo for each of her three novels, and I thought, what a great way to celebrate one’s published work. Since I don’t have a book of poems published, I became concerned that to honor each of my published poems, I would end of up with a substantial part of my body tattooed. So, I opted for a tattoo that would be a tribute to my sweetheart. Also, I love felines as does my sweetheart. I wanted to steer clear of clichés because I do consider myself a decent writer. It took me a few months to find the right design and choose a spot for the tattoo. I’m happy with the location [the upper right side of the chest, near the shoulder], but I probably picked one of the tenderest areas of the body for a needle to repeatedly pierce. The tail of the cat is in the shape of an inverted letter “J,” the first initial of my love, and it’s red because my sweetheart’s hair is red.

I had this tattoo done, as I did the other two, by Anna McClain at Saint Tattoo in Knoxville, Tennessee. Saint has won all sorts of awards. It’s THE place to go for quality, creative work. Anna’s work is distinctive, but you can’t really tell from the Alien cat. If you show your Anna-tattoo to tattoo people around Knoxville, they always recognize it as Anna’s work. My other tattoos show her talent. Anna is quiet and sweet, so even though I was practically shaking with fear over what was about to be done to my body, I went through with it because Anna gave me the confidence. The entire process took about 20 minutes – the tattoo is about as small as she could make it – and the only pain resulted from when the needle was close to the bone (I’m bony).

That first tattoo I gave to myself as a birthday present and the second was a year later, another birthday gift. My sweetheart and I had become close enough that I had a pet name for her, Mermaid, so I decided to have a mermaid tattoo as a kind of promise ring or something. It took me several months to find a design that wasn’t Disney’s The Little Mermaid or a fantasy-style mermaid. I took the design to Anna, and she worked for about 20 minutes to come up with a custom design.


I loved and love the tattoo running down my left hip, like a mermaid floating under the water. Also, I can see the tattoo without having to use a mirror, just like the alien cat. I personalized further by having my sweetheart’s first and last initials lettered in one of the air bubbles surrounding the mermaid. This one took about an hour and a half, and it hurt like hell because again, I’m bony, and the only relief came when Anna worked, briefly, on the small part of the design that extended to my ass. I think Anna was almost as excited about the final product as I was. I knew she liked working with color, and the alien cat was 95% solid black, and then just the snippet of red tail. This tattoo is so sensual and feminine.

My last tattoo came on December 22, my birthday, of last year. My relationship with JW had progressed, and so the moon tattoo is a testament to our growing intimacy.


The moon is symbolic for me in many ways, one of which is that one of my favorite novels by my sweetheart has the word “moon” in the title and is an important symbol in the book. I came up with the design by taking a sort of standard shape crescent moon, adding the flowing purple hair, and then asking Anna to add her special touch to it. She nixed my initial request for red hair because she said the moon would not be red, plus it would make it look angry, which is not what I was going for. She was skeptical about my desire to have the entire first name “Julia” in script as part of the moon’s hair, but she found a way to make it work. Anna did the perfect job of choosing colors, again creating such a sensual, dreamy image. My right hip isn’t any tougher than my left one; for some reason, this one hurt worse than the mermaid, and during the last thirty minutes of the process, I could feel my nails (and my nails are nothing to speak of in length) sinking into the little black leather pillow I was cradling. Luckily, I could then concentrate on worrying I was tearing up her pillow instead of the needle.

Before the tattoos, I wrote a poem for my sweetheart, trying to use tattoo as metaphor in a fresh way. I’ve been told the poem works because of its sensual qualities, which is different from other tattoo poems."

Head over here to read Caroline's poem, "Body Art".

A hearty thank you to Caroline Malone, not only for participating in the Tattooed Poet's Project, but for providing such a close, intimate look at her tattoos and the process behind them!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Tess. Lotta's Tree Has Her Back

Today's tattoo comes to us from Tess. Lotta, a poet and editor of Media Cake eMagazine. She was referred to me by Rick Lupert over at the Poetry Super Highway:


Ms. Lotta had this piece tattooed "around 1998-99". She noted that, "it took awhile, as it was painful along the spine".

She continues explaining the piece:

"...Most of my work, including this back piece, is done by my dear friend Owen Connell. His shop, Parlor F, is located in Seattle ... At the same time I was coming through some heavy shit in my life, our neighbor was chopping down a very healthy, fabulous oak tree. She left it a stump. By the next spring, the stump had sprouted fresh twigs, each waving tiny, green flags at the ends as if to say 'I’m here.' It was a deep lesson for me. I’m lucky to have two trees in my life now: a skittish but big-hearted lemon tree (it was mutilated by an untrained tree trimmer) and a scrappy peach tree that is cranky as hell."

Thanks to Tess. for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Be sure to head over to BillyBlog and read one of her poems!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Whitman's Song on Michael Mayo's Chest

Today's tattooed poet has a poetry tattoo. Michael Mayo was referred to me by the poet Dorianne Laux, who taught Michael at North Carolina State University.


Michael Mayo has "I celebrate myself and sing myself" tattooed on his chest, honoring the opening line of Walt Whitman's iconic poem "Song of Myself":

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Michael explains why he chose to have these words, first published in 1855 in Leaves of Grass, tattooed over his heart:

"I got the Whitman quote for a few reasons. The year before [2005], I was dealing with a lot of difficult issues with my family and my Chemistry major at school. My confidence and happiness were being affected very negatively. I took an intro to poetry writing class, and I found I enjoyed the catharsis of writing.

I don't know if I read "Song of Myself" on my own or if we read it in class, but I remember admiring not only the beauty in Whitman's words, but his self-assuredness.

I got the tattoo as a symbol to myself of a great American poet to admire and imitate and as a reminder to have faith and confidence in myself."

Michael is a Creative Writing major and is planning on applying to MFA programs in the fall.

The tattoo was done on his 22nd birthday, March 20, 2006, at Blue Flame Tattoo in Raleigh, North Carolina. Work from Blue Flame has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Check out Michael's poem "Blowing Off Death" over on BillyBlog.

Thanks to Michael for sharing his poetic tattoo here on Tattoosday!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Kim Addonizio's Blue Roses

When first embarking on this tattoo project, nearly everyone I asked referred me to Kim Addonizio. I'd venture to say she is the poet most well-known as "tattoo-friendly". In part, this is due to her editing an anthology called Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos.

Graciously, Kim accepted my invitation to participate in Tattoosday's National Poetry Month project. She sent me the photo above, her fourth tattoo. I love the blue roses that set this piece apart from most lower back tribal tattoos.

Kim told me:

"The piece was done ... in Santa Barbara. It was the worst tattoo experience I ever had. (I have five tattoos). In the middle of it [the artist] took a phone call, saying, "Oh, hi. I'm tattooing a crack." I like the tattoo, though. There wasn't any particular significance to the design, for me, though afterwards I thought about Laura Wingfield in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie being called Blue Roses by her Gentleman Caller, and so it's become a bit of a reminder to myself, when I'm feeling fragile, to take a risk rather than withdraw."

She had this tattooed in 1994 and has added one more to her collection since then.

Be sure to head on over to BillyBlog to read one of Kim's poems. And although not every poem written by an inked poet appearing on BillyBlog this month is tattoo-related, Kim's is.

Thanks very much to Kim Addonizio for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Jill Alexander Essbaum's Poetic Feet (and Jessica Piazza's Too!)

UPDATED! See below....


I've decided to launch this special National Poetry Month Tattoosday feature with the wonderful tattooed feet of Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of several collections of poetry, the most recent being Harlot.

Although this month I will be featuring tattoos on poets, not every tattoo is poetic, in the literal sense. Jill's inked feet are.

Jill met me in the Starbucks at 7 Penn Plaza on a cold day in February, prior to a reading at the KGB Bar later that evening.

She was one of the first poets who signed on to this project, and she allowed me the honor of taking a clearer picture of her tattoos, even though they appeared here, on the Best American Poetry blog, back in May 2008.

Although the concept may be alien to many, students and purveyors of the art of poetry know that a line of poetry can be broken down into metered verse that is identifiable based on the stress and intonation of the syllables.

People may have heard that most of Shakespeare's work is composed, for example, in iambic pentameter. What that means is that each line is comprised of five parts, or "feet," and each foot is made up of an iamb, or two syllables, the first of which is unstressed, followed by the stressed sound.

The name "Marie" is an iamb, for example, as the stress falls on the second syllable. "Mary," on the other hand, has the stress on the first syllable, and is identified as a "trochee".

There are other types of poetic fragments, such as dactylls and anapests, but the iambic and trochaic feet are the most common.

So what does this have to do with Jill's feet? When poets study and scan a line of verse, they mark it up, identifying the stress marks with the accents (or longums), and the unstressed syllables with a symbol known as a brevis.


Jill's feet are literally with the symbols denoting them as trochee (left) and iamb (right). Pure brilliance, in my opinion.

Jill and her friend Jessica came up with this idea last year and gave it significant thought.

As most poets (with notable exceptions, of course) are also teachers, they thought it would be a great visual aid when educating students on scansion.

Jill spent a weekend sketching and drawing the marks, not as easy a task as one would imagine. How to make the marks look like poetic symbols, and not stray ink marks, or even worse, scars, was a part of the process.

She and Jessica mulled the placement on the body: should they go on their wrists? Jill, a professed punster, then had the revelation: iambs and trochees are poetic feet, the tattoos should go on their own feet.

Trochee went on the right side, because it is a progressive, forward-moving beat. Iamb went on the left, as it is a heartbeat.

She and Jessica both got inked in June 2008, shortly before the West Chester Poetry Conference. What better setting to show off fresh poetry tattoos?

Each tattoo took only 15 minutes, and Jessica placed her ink on the sides of her feet, as opposed to the tops like Jill.

I want to thank Jill Alexander Essbaum for helping launch this special feature here on Tattoosday. I invite you to head over here to BillyBlog and check out one of Jill's poems, along with links to more of her work.

WAIT! There's more.....

Here's a photo of the feet of Jill's friend Jessica Piazza:


As noted before, it's the same tattoo, just oriented differently on the feet. Jessica added:

I figured, since it was my idea in the first place, I should be up on this if I can. Too bad we couldn't find a way to get tattoos that symbolize rhyme. I'm more of the meter dork than Jill, which is why I wanted these in the first place. (In all fairness, doing it on our feet was her stroke of genius!)

And, as Jill noted in the comment section, the tattooist is Chris Torres.

Head on back over to BillyBlog here to see one of Jessica's poems.