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.

The Tattooed Poet's Project: An Introduction

April is National Poetry Month!

In addition to the "regular" Tattoosday features, every day in April will feature a different poet's tattoo(s).

Poets across America have contributed photos of their tattoos for us to enjoy, with each post linking back to BillyBlog, where one of their poems will be posted on the corresponding day.

Not all the poems are tattoo-related, but many are. Please come back every day in April to see the wide range of poetic tattoos!

Tattoorism: Christina's Fleur-de-lys

For those of you visiting Tattoosday for the first time, I refer to posts based on reader submissions as Tattoorism. That is, tattoos from out of town visiting us here in the blogosphere.

There was a pleasant surprise in my in box this morning:


Skeptics may say, "What's the big deal? It's just a fleur-de-lis!" But we here at Tattoosday don't think that way. Tattoos aren't just designs inked into the flesh, they generally carry significance that transcend the skin and touch the soul.

And I'm always interested when someone I've never met takes the time and energy to send me a photo and elaborate on their tattoo. Christina's tattoo, above, is a case in point.

I'll let Christina explain her one and only tattoo:

"Tom Berg at SoCal Tattoo in San Pedro, CA did my ink. He designed the elaborate tattoo for the main character in the tv show "Prison Break," [see below] among others.

My husband works for the show and knows Tom, so he was able to get an appointment in two weeks instead of the one-year waiting list that he normally has. So we had that going for us, which is good.

People ask me all the time if the 4-inch fleur de lys between my shoulders means that I really really love the [New Orleans] Saints, or the Boy Scouts... Nope. The fleur has been popping up in my life for years. I wore a ring with a fleur on it, identical to a ring that my best friend in high school wore, which we got on my first road trip. That relationship was instrumental in breaking me out of my shell in school. I wore the fleur on a necklace through college. Then, I spent a year living in Florence, Italy. The symbol of the city is the Florentine "gigli," or lily, the Italian version of the fleur de lys.

One of my housemates said something that stuck with me. "Florence doesn't change you, it only makes you more like you are."

For me, my tattoo is a symbol of my journey toward becoming who I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to do, living how I am supposed to live. I got it two months after I married the love of my life, my best friend since I was 12."

The Fleur-de-lis (also spelled fleur-de-lys) has appeared on Tattoosday previously here. I'd like to thank Christina for her continued readership and contribution to the blog!

I cannot guarantee that I'll publish every tattoo e-mailed my way, so I don't openly solicit contributions. However, every once in a while, it's a nice change of pace, both for us here at Tattoosday and, I believe, the readers. Thanks again, Christina!

More stick-n-poke radness

Do you remember the post I did about the young man with the butterflies on his feet and the ridiculous home tattoos? Well, he showed me some photos of his friend's tattoos. And boy, are they ridiculous!

First up- booyah! arm!

This poor person has "booyah!" on their arm not once, but at least SEVEN TIMES! I can also see a pterodactyl, a ghost, and "USA GOES UNDEFEATED".


I wish I knew the story behind this one. "Saves Latin"??? ... maybe I don't really want to know.


And this. What is this? An alien-insect with patriotic wings riding a scooter with hello kitty with a mustache in the back? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

Seriously, the more I see tattoos like this, the more I shake my head and start to wonder if they are really works of genius instead of being the worst tattoos in the world.

Jorge's Attabeira Tattoo Pays Tribute to His Puerto Rican Heritage

Last May, I spent a few minutes on the N train talking to a woman named Patricia who had a cool tattoo on the back of her neck (see the post here). She disembarked before I was able to get all the facts on the piece, but I still posted the blurry photo.

No, I didn't run into her again. But I did meet Jorge, who had a similar piece on his inner left forearm based on the fertility goddess Atabey, or Attabeira, the goddess of fertility in the Taíno culture of Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean:



The piece runs the length of his inner arm, and took 2 sittings and 6 hours to complete.

He had this tattooed by Byron Velasquez, then at Rising Dragon Tattoos in 2001. Byron now tattoos out of Abstract Black NYC. Jorge chose this image as an icon to represent his Puerto Rican heritage. This is one of his three tattoos.

Check out other work from Rising Dragon previously appearing on Tattoosday here.

Thanks to Jorge for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Xrin Arms Explains His Tattoos

I ran into Anthony after work while passing through the Amtrak section of Penn Station.

He was in town to perform in Brooklyn and was waiting for his ride. He performs under the name "Xrin Arms," which he pronounced as "Your-in-arms". He's a techno punk musician currently on tour. Here's the flier for the gig he was playing that night:


He had an unusual series of tattoos which he allowed me to photograph, after he explained them to me.

The tattoos cover a significant part of his upper right arm, as well as one side of his forearm.

First and foremost, as a writer, he had his pen inked on his arm.


He always uses a Pilot Precise V5, he said,

and he produced one to show me, holding it up to the piece to show me that it was tattooed to scale.

The next element of his inked arm is a legion of sperm directed at his elbow. Some of the sperm are traveling from the pen, representing the knowledge that flows from the written word.

At the center of the elbow is a moth in a circle. He said that it represents a "moth in a beehive". When I questioned that image, he acknowledged that that was how he feels a lot of the time.


If you picture a moth in a beehive, you envision many things: solitude and violence. Of beauty and alienation. The sperm heading toward this image reinforce that the creative experience is a birthing process fraught with danger.

Lastly, on the back of the bicep, is an owl with its wings outstretched.


The owl represents to him that he is noctural, and stays up all night.

He has 2 other tattoos but we stuck with these because they played off one another.

They were tattooed by Chris Bragg when he was working out of Hammer's Tattoo & Body Piercing in Canton, Ohio.

Please check out Xrin Arms myspace page here. There's also a cool interview with Anthony over on the blog Digital Liver here.

Thanks again to for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday.

As an added extra, here's a video of Xrin Arms song "Feather Mask":

Cats with no ears

I just took in two of the cutest cats ever, and so I have had cats on the brain lately. Because of this, I thought I'd do some searching for bad cat tattoos. I am SURE there are worse ones out here, but this is what I found- three cat tattoos without any ears. Why would you ever draw a cat without ears? It just makes them look like weird aliens!


This looks like a Lisa Frank drawing without the pizazz.


This is the most half-assed tattoo I have possibly ever seen. Why are the eyes sideways? Why are the whiskers blue? Where are the ears? So many unanswered questions!


This is a mix of the lady's five cats and some human (the right eye). Why the human has a lazy eye, I don't know. I also think the cat is actually the bark of a tree.


And finally, while not technically terrible, this butterfly-cat holding a flower and inexplicably wearing pants makes me laugh.

Two Tattooed Tourists on a Tuesday

Sometimes the hand of Fate guides the Tattoosday blogger as he journeys through the streets of New York. At lunch, a change in traffic signals prompted me to veer East, sending me into a bank vestibule that I rarely, if ever, frequent.

I could have ventured into a dozen branches or drug stores to do my business but this is where I ended up on a day that started frigid, but was still in the blustery high 30's at noon.

I finished my ATM transaction and exited, not even glancing at the two people to my left, jacketed and weighed down with large backpacks.

I hit the sidewalk, peering into a side window bordering the vestibule. I did a quick about-face and headed back into the bank. Despite the coats, hats, and long pants, I could tell the two men I had been next to had significant ink.

And, once back inside, I was delighted to find them both willing to talk tattoos.

Both men were visiting tourists from England. The first one I spoke to was Jethro "Jeff" Wood, a tattoo artist who works out of The SkynYard in Southend-on-Sea (in Essex County, 40 miles East of central London). I spoke to Jeff first, while his friend Sam worked the ATM machine.

Jeff estimates that his body is 30% covered in ink. He offered up this neck piece:


I apologize for the angle, but one can see that it's a pretty nice grim reaper tattoo. You also get a view of the small skull and crossbones behind Jeff's left ear.

He had been hanging out with another tattooer and "got drunk and tatted my neck". The artist was Dan Sims at Life Family Tattoo in Sevenoaks, Kent, in England.

Not to be outdone, Jeff's friend Sam had an amazing pirate-themed neck piece, with a "Do or Die" banner, courtesy of Jeff:


The two visitors seemed to enjoy showing their tattoos and were soon rolling up pant legs to show me what Jeff's apprentice, Charlie, had tattooed on the back of Sam's left leg:


That is the mask of The Ultimate Warrior.




Sam also showed me some work on his right leg, also credited to Charlie, featuring a mythical creature, "The Rare Horned Dolfin," stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist:


Granted, it's a funny tattoo, but I believe there was an element I was missing (perhaps a key facet of an inside joke). Sam and Jeff laughed heartily while showing me the piece, along with another gag tattoo on Sam's right calf, a D.L.T. sandwich:


In a DLT sandwich, the bacon is replaced by, you guessed it, tiny smiling dolphins!


I also get a kick out of the "I love frogs" scribbled above the D.L.T. Note the S is reversed. Sam indicated that Charlie had done some of these, but he had also inked a few himself, on an experimental basis.

Both men also have knuckle tattoos, and pictures of their knuckle are posted here at KnuckleTattoos.com.

Thanks again to Sam and Jeff for sharing their tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Only God Can Judge Him

A nice surprise last night when, out of the blue, a previous Tattoosday subject, John, sent me his latest tattoo.

I met John initially at the 3rd Avenue Festival in Bay Ridge, back in the earlier days of the blog, where he displayed a leg piece in progress here.

He later had the piece finished and we featured it, in all its glory, here. In addition, he sent me photos of his other three tattoos here.

But here is something new from John, who I haven't seen in a while. He explained this new tattoo via e-mail:

[It] says "Solo Dio Puo Giudicarmi" ... which means [in Italian] "Only God Can Judge Me"... I got the tattoo for religious reasons and for another one ... nowadays people give a shit too much about what other people think and try to conform to be like everyone else just to blend in. [The tattoo] is a reminder to me and to all that read it, regardless of belief: just be who you are. Because, in the end, it does not matter what anyone else think of you, but you.

Thanks again to John for sending this my way! We always appreciate return visits from previous Tattoosday subjects!

Fairy Tattoo Design Pictures

Fairy Tattoo Design PicturesFairy tattoos are they modern apparitions? While the motif; of the fairy tattoos may be a recent appearance in the tattoo parlor, the magical and mischievous quality of the fairy kingdom has been around for ages. It seems only fitting that these nature spirits and guardians of magic should become more and more popular as years go by. They fit right in with the mystical

Bad chest tattoos

I think there is a trend of getting bad chest tattoos with bloody writing. Please tell me this isn't so, and it's just these three unfortunate dudes.


"All Hope Is Gone" -- not a very good thing to get when you're young (I cropped his face out of the photo, he looks like he is 17). Also what's the logo on the right? I assume these are bad lyrics of some sort.


"Blood Is Forever" -- I guess this is a way of celebrating family, but there is surely a much better way to do it. Also the bloody cracked Batman logo is an a+ addition there, buddy.


"Pull The Trigger Bitch" -- sdkjfhsdk I can seriously not think of a worse thing to get tattooed on your chest for all time. Do you think he will ever have sex with anyone ever again? I guess he'll just have to keep his shirt on indefinitely!

Tattoorism: Joltin' Joe Swings for the Fences

A couple weeks back, I posted a really cool Marilyn Monroe tattoo with a New York Yankees spin.

To give Joe DiMaggio his proper due, we have this leg piece above, sent to us by Craig, who explains:

"[Had] this tattoo done last February. I am a big Yankee fan .... [I] like watching all the old timers on TV anytime I can. Wanted something different.....something that stood for what baseball was, back in the day. Had it done by a local shop, Hard Core Ink in Catasauqua, PA. Jon was the artist. The guy does not know how good he really is! I have the next one lined up .... going to have [Mickey] Mantle kneeling in the on deck circle at The Stadium put on my right leg."

Craig's piece is a great replica of this famous photo:


As baseball season approaches, we here at Tattoosday thank Craig for sending us his awesome tattoo of "The Yankee Clipper," and look forward to seeing what Jon at Hard Core Ink can do with Mickey Mantle.

Thanks Craig!

Megan's Numeric Neck tattoo

On a day when my wife was tattooed with a lucky "13," it seemed fortuitous when our waitress at dinner unveiled her numeric tattoo:


Born on April 7, Megan had these hash marks inked onto the back left side of her neck.

Because of the numbers 4 and 7 being significant in her life (aside from their analagousness to the seventh of April), she chose a rather unorthodox forty-seven lines, inked up like a scorecard.

This was tattooed at New York Adorned.

Thanks to Megan for baring her neck in the line of duty and sharing with us here on Tattoosday!

A PSA against home tattooing

I've posted some awesomely ridiculously terrible and rad stick-n-poke tattoos here in the past, and I will again. I have a soft spot for bad tattoos that friends do to each other. This one, however, is pretty inexcusable, and shows how home tattooing is generally a really really really really bad idea.



ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. This makes me hurt all over just looking at it. So scratchy!!!! I can't even imagine what it must look like healed. I think my favorite part is that he only has one eyeball.

More Zombies

Please excuse me for posting about my own tattoos so much this week, but I can't help myself! I'll post some legitimately terrible tattoos soon, don't worry!

You guys should all know by now that I am fascinated by flash tattoos and tattoos that come from the same drawing but look different. The tattoo I got on Friday was part of a Friday the 13th special, where you could get any flash zombie on a sheet for $40. I chose the classic coming-out-of-the-grave-zombie, and it turns out three of my friends went for the same thing. One of my friends and I got sxe zombies, my other two friends got the zombie as he was on the sheet. Here are all four zombies for comparison (done by three different artists, see if you can spot the two that were done by the same person).

Tehila's Amazing Tattoos Rest Deep in Her Faith

After my wife got her "13" tattoo (story here), we had some time to kill before our dinner reservations at 7:00 pm. So, we headed to Chelsea, then walked down 23rd Street to the Housing Works Thrift Shop.

It was there, while browsing, that I met Tehila, who was visiting from Washington, D.C. It was this tattoo that jumped out at me:


Quite an elaborate neck tattoo, which was in part designed by her mother, from her birth announcement. The quote, "Do justly, walk humbly, love mercy," is from the book of Micah (Chapter 6, Verse 8) in the Old Testament.

The complete passage from the King James Version is

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Tehila, however, had another tattoo to show me. She took off her jacket and rolled up her right sleeve.

On her inner forearm was this amazing hamsa tattoo:


Unfortunately, the photo doesn't do the piece justice, as the prayers, in Hebrew, circle the arm completely. One of the prayers is from the Amidah. I generally shy away from taking pictures of pieces that wrap around the arms, for fear of not being able to capture the full spirit of the tattoo. But in this case, the work was so lovely, I couldn't resist.



Tattoos with Hebrew writing have appeared previously on Tattoosday here. I have featured a hamsa tattoo previously here.

The pieces are credited to Imaani K. Brown and Chris Menhah at Pinz-N-Needlez in D.C. Chris inked the Hamsah and Imaani is responsible for the neck piece and the Hebrew text the wraps around the forearm.


Wondrous thanks to Tehila for sharing these beautiful tattoos here on Tattoosday!

An Interlude

The previous post featured our recent adventures at Dare Devil Tattoo on Friday the 13th.

I wrote specifically about my wife Melanie getting her lucky 13 tattoo on her birthday. People who know me and know Tattoosday were excited not just for her, but for me as well. They knew I'd be surrounded by tattoos, and that I would therefore be busy talking to people about Tattoosday, and collecting stories and photos that would last me through summer.

Not quite.

Certainly the cold weather helped (or hindered, depending on your perspective), but the concept behind Tattoosday has always been about the random spotting of tattoos on the streets of New York. The expression "shooting fish in a barrel" comes to mind. There is no "sport," if you will, in going to a tattoo shop, or convention, and collecting blogfodder.

I could certainly do it, but the randomness and surprise element that one finds on the street are what really help propel the blog along.

So, by the end of our Dare Devil adventure, I had material for the post on Melanie's tattoo, nothing more. I did pass my card to the two young ladies behind us with whom we had a mutual friend, but I did not request their participation, although I could have. I did not identify myself to shop employees as an ink- blogger, although I could have.

Not to mention, it was Melanie's birthday, not mine. I was there for her, not me. No lucky 13 tattoo for me, although I would have loved one.

I was rewarded later in the day by two other tattoo encounters, which I did document, and which will appear in the days to come. I am hoping to receive emails from the participants to fill in the blanks that time and necessity left incomplete.

So, stay tuned.

Thanks for visiting.

crows

I just got my thighs done. These are beyond awesome. Only the linework is done so far, but I'll get them finished next month. Done by the ever-awesome Myles Karr at Saved in Brooklyn, NY.





the placement is great