April is National Poetry Month, so what better way to celebrate your favorite poets by tattooing related quotes and ideas onto your body? OK, I am sure there are other ways, especially for those who aren't looking to get inked. Regardless, everyone loves seeing what strong impacts authors and their creations had on people to inspire some tattoos. Below are some people's manifestations of some great poets. Who knows, maybe you will find interest in a new author or even a new idea for that tattoo you have been meaning to get!
1. From a letter written by Charles Bukowski
2. "Jabberywocky" by Lewis Carroll
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"
3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
"Greetings to you, the lucky finder of this golden ticket, from Mr. Willy Wonka! I shake you warmly by the hand! Tremendous things are in store for you!"
4. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
"When the doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw 'the tree with the lights in it'. It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchard of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it..."
5. "Four Quartets" by T.S. Eliot
"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing..."
6. "Merlin's Song" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity..."
7. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost
"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep..."
8. "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg
"Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I am..."
9. "If" by Rudyard Kipling
10. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars..."
11. "A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"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."
12. "The Silver Chair" (Chronicles of Narnia Book 6) C.S. Lewis
"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones."
13. From a letter written by Edgar Allen Poe
14. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
15. "Invitation" in "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein
"If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer... If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!"
16. "Macbeth" by Shakespeare
"Double, double toil and trouble, Fire burn, and caldron bubble."
17. "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Dead men don't bite."
18. "Life on the Mississippi" by Mark Twain
"One lives to find out."
19. "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify."
20. "Preface to Leaves" of Grass by Walt Whitman
"...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."
21. "The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People" by Oscar Wilde
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"
Happy Poetry Month!
