Apollo, Dionysus, and Cody Wilson (The Tattooed Poets Project)

We are a launching our eleventh annual Tattooed Poets Project with Cody Wilson, who shared these amazing tattoos:

Cody explained:

"I’m a big fan of Nietzsche’s thoughts on the role of art, especially in The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche argues that we need a balance of order and disorder, and that these things compliment one another. Apollo, on my right leg, represents this as a patron of art: he was a symbol of reason and pragmatism for the Greeks. Dionysus, on my left, was also a patron of the arts, the god of wine and theater, and often represented disorder or a detachment from reason. I think in writing poetry, there’s a liminal space that we have to balance when we commit ourselves to the poem while also detaching ourselves from it in order to let it do its own thing. So often in life have I been Dionysian and craved the Apollonian, and vice versa. Having each god face each other on each leg was a sort of tribute to this. These pieces are modeled after Greek pottery from the 5th Century. Shoutout to Nigel Hirschi (@nergent) at High Noon Tattoo (@highnoontattoo) in Phoenix, who loves the weird, Greek-influenced art of Aubrey Beardsley, for tattooing these, along with at least 10 other pieces on my body. Some of my tattoos mean something. Some of them mean I just liked Nigel’s art. Order and disorder!"

Cody also sent us this tattoo-themed poem:

Admiring Japanese Flash While Getting Tattooed

A cupped hummingbird
in a palm chatters its beak
into flesh. Plasma
like nectar seeps to spittle.
Flowers get under my skin.

The sudden needles:
ADHD. My mind fires
its nociceptors
like bulbs breaking for photos.
The photographer stays hunched.

For lines, needles like
spines. For shades, needles like combs.
Needles fracking flesh.
My native skin protesting
unfair trespass of pigment.

Memento Mori:
Yorick’s grin is in my skin.
His mooned forehead wanes
behind my shirt—epitaph
engraved on my collar bone.

~ ~ ~

Cody Wilson teaches English and Creative Writing in Arizona. He has an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. His chapbook, Nobody is Ever Missing, was published by Tolsun Books. Some of his work appears at Juxtaprose, The Southampton Review, Juked, Emrys, New Ohio Review and Arc Poetry Magazine.

Thanks to Cody Wilson for sharing his tattoos and poem, helping us launch our eleventh year of the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2019 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.net and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Catherine Bresner

Our next Tattooed Poet o' the Week is Catherine Bresner.

She sent us photos of two of her tattoos, starting with this literary ink:

The line that marches across Catherine's collarbone and around her shoulder is "mi corazón se cierra como una flor nocturna."

Catherine explains,

"My first tattoo is on my collarbone and is a line from one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda. It is from his poem 'I Have Gone Marking', which is in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. The translation is 'My heart closes like a nocturnal flower'. I grew up near the ocean and in this way I suppose I have always felt a sort of kinship with Neruda. We both draw inspiration from the sea."

She also shared this one:

Catherine explains:

"My second tattoo is on my upper arm, and it is part of Aubrey Beardsley's illustration entitled "The Peacock Skirt" (1893).

Aubrey Beardsley was an Art Nouveau artist and author. This is the image that Oscar Wilde used to promote his tragedy Salome, and it depicts the Syrian Captain of the Guard who casts his gaze on Salome.

I am haunted by Beardsley's artwork, and by this picture in particular, because it is seductive and sinister. I also loved the story behind its origination, as Beardsley and Wilde often collaborated together in order to create their art.

Both tattoos were done by the very talented Tim Brewer, who owns a tattoo shop in Hadley, Massachusetts called Blueprint Gallery."

Catherine was also kind enough to share the following unpublished poem:

LACUNA


The ivy presses against the window pane as if this room were the sun—as if this was the center
of everything, here, among the tables and books. The pillars are endless, their flirtations growing
like ivy from beneath floorboards; they nuzzle the skylight panes.

(Outside: the bird caw and the daisy’s slow decay.)

Everything is sinuous and coy, each wallpaper detail like a belly dancer, exotic and surprising.
Each lampshade, a crocus. Walls are not walls here.
In the orange light of a sunset, the cherry wood glows like the first ember in a forest fire.
This room gives off its own light.

Outside, the wind pulls at the last patch of grass until it turns tawny and brittle. The sun is a gas
lamp dimming out.

~ ~ ~

Catherine Bresner is the author of the chapbook The Merriam Webster Series. She was the editorial assistant of Pilot Books, an intern for The Massachusetts Review, and a participant of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Her poetry has been published in The Pinch, H_NGM_N, and Burntdistrict and has poetry forthcoming in The Cream City Review and Yemassee, where she was a finalist for the Pocataligo Poetry Contest. She is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at The University of Washington, Seattle, where she is the associate editor for The Seattle Review and an intern at Wave Books.

Thanks to Catherine for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Mara Shares a Decorative Tattoo

I met Mara this afternoon in the plaza at the corner of 39th Street and Broadway. She was kind enough to share the above tattoo, inked on her left forearm.

She talked to me as she finished her soup, and I'm appreciative of that, as I felt a little guilty intruding on her lunch break.

Mara notes that this piece is "purely decorative". It was tattooed by Stephanie Tamez at New York Adorned, based on a design created by her friend Katherine Irwin.


The tattoo is inspired by the work of Aubrey Beardsley (who provided inspiration for a previous Tattoosday entry here). The lines and design, especially the peacock feathers, have a Beardsley-esque feel to them.


Thanks to Mara for sharing this beautiful tattoo with us!

Matt's Aubrey Beardsley Tattoo (Salome for the 21st Century)

I spotted this tattoo on the inner forearm of Matt, on April 26, 2008.

I was just about to leave St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, a church that is a landmark edifice, both architecturally and culturally, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There had been a poetry reading earlier in the day, a tribute reading to Barbara Guest, who died in 2006. I was packing up my bag to leave the wine and cheese reception when I spotted the ink out of the corner of my eye.

"It's based on an Aubrey Beardsley woodcut," Matt explained, "it's Salome".

Oh, the Dance of the Seven Veils. Matt nodded, but went on to explain that the tattoo was modified a little.

For example, in the original woodcut, Salome is holding the severed head of John the Baptist. I believe this is the Beardsley woodcut to which he was referring:

Matt's friend Kazumi Kikuchi helped revise the sketch to alter the head to a broken heart. He also added the Japanese characters at the top of the piece.

Matt gave credit to the band Daddy for the broken heart image which replaced the severed head. He said that the image was on an album cover of theirs. I was unable to find any art from the album but did find this promo shot, which has the heart image in the lower corner:


This piece was inked at Atomic Ink in Hudson, New York. Matt, who has "4 or 5" tattoos, did not recall the name of the artist.

I thanked Matt for talking with me, but decided to ask one more question. "What's with the heart at the bottom of the piece?"


"Oh," he smiled, "My wife, Laura, did that, with a needle and some India ink". Laura, sitting nearby, piped in, "I have a matching one here," pointing to her right thigh, "but you can't see it." Her jeans prevented an easy peek.

Thanks to Matt for sharing his woodcut tattoo with us!