The Tattooed Poets Project: Sophie Klahr

Our next tattooed poet is Sophie Klahr and, like our previous contributor, she has an inky connection to Ranier Maria Rilke.

The tattoo consists of four words appearing at the end of the following excerpt of Rilke's first elegy in the Duino Elegies. The words appear in context here: 

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic
orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,
and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.

Sophie states, "This tattoo appears in my handwriting, and was done by Alex Cetina in 2010, at the Gaslight Gallery in Houston, TX." Cetina now tattoos out of Old Crow Parlor.

She also sent us the following poem, which originally appeared in TYPO:

HOUDINI DOG

Houdini would hide copies of the same key all over his body

during any trick with a lock. You give me a copy of your apartment

key but Dog, we cannot both go home at once. We say home,

meaning half a dozen places, overlapping by one.

I should be more careful and copy your way of touching

just about everyone to make everyone feel a little special.

I should learn to be your type of thief.

Dog, there’s the problem of your moon-face, how despite

any onlookers, you’ll offer food your tongue has touched to me.

Tell me more about Houdini— I know he was your hero as a child,

when your mother was alive, when you believed in a magic

that required no one else. 

~ ~ ~

Sophie Klahr’s poetry, essays and reviews can be found in Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and Sycamore Review, among others. Her collaborative projects include creating scenic texts with the contemporary dance theatre influxdance. She is the poetry editor of Gigantic Sequins.

Thanks to Sophie for sending us her poem and tattoo for this year's 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Simone Muench

Our next tattooed poet is Simone Muench, who sent us this photo:

Simone explained the birth of this tattoo in great detail:

"In 1999, after a challenging year, I decided to mark the year by bleaching my hair platinum, getting inked, or going bungee jumping—the tattoo won, and became a birthday present to myself. It was an illustration that had enchanted me for years. I first discovered the sketch in a slim book, published in 1957, which I purchased at a thrift store for $2.

It was a version of the Duino Elegies translated and illustrated by Harry Behn, who is known primarily for his children’s books. I loved the simplicity and strangeness of his Miró-like illustrations. I’m less in love with the translations though I love Rilke, and have always been struck by his notion in Letters to a Young Poet that love consists of 'two solitudes [that] protect and border and greet each other.' 

Behn’s sketch echoes Rilke’s quote, as it demonstrates two figures in shadow being both separated and bound by another figure (absence; solitude).

In the days when I frequently played pool, one of my pool partners, Ben Wahhh, offered to tattoo me. Two years previously, in 1997, Ben had opened up Deluxe Tattoo on Irving Park Rd in Chicago. Not only is Ben a wonderful tattoo artist, he’s an incredibly kind human being. You can read a lovely article about Ben Wahhh and Deluxe Tattoo [here].

The process took about 3+ hours and cost me a modest $100 dollars. Afterwards, we visited a Chicago bar called the Black Beetle to shoot pool and celebrate my new, beautiful (and leaky) tattoo, which is now 15 years old and still vibrant; I've only had it retouched once. Few people notice my tattoo nowadays due to the constantly expanding tattoo industry, but when I was freshly inked, many people commented on it, often thinking it was a fake due to the rectangular shape and bright colors. I even had a man approach me while I was dancing at Danny’s Bar, and attempt to peel it off my back because 'it looked like a stick-on.' "

Simone also sent us the following poem, which was first published in Poets & Writers. She prefaces this stating it, "is a cento whose first line highjacks one of the lines from my favorite section of Rilke’s 8th elegy:

And we: spectators, always, everywhere,
turned toward the world of objects, never outward.
It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down. We
rearrange it, then break down ourselves. (Stephen Mitchell, trans.)

~ ~ ~

Wolf Cento

We: spectators, always, everywhere

with goldpinnacled hair & seascapes

of a pale green monochrome,

we wanted to be wolves:

strange animal with its miraculous elusiveness—

a step toward luck & a step toward ruin.

Old circuits of animal rapture & alarm

have stained the sun with blackened love.

The question of the wolves turns & turns.

[Rainer Marie Rilke, James Joyce, W.C Williams, Frank Stafford, Marianne Moore, Edith Södergran, Robert Duncan, Osip Mandelstam, John Berryman]

~ ~ ~

Simone Muench is the author of five full-length collections including Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010) and Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014), as well as the forthcoming chapbook Trace (Fall 2012 Black River Chapbook Award; Black Lawrence Press). She is a recipient of a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two VSC fellowships, two Illinois Arts fellowships, a Yaddo residency, an Artsmith residency, and the Bright Lights/Big Verse PSA Award. She received her Ph.D from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and now directs the writing program at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies. She serves as chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. You can read more at simonemuench.com

Thanks to Simone for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

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.