Tattoo Friday: "I Am Vertical"

In this tattoo, a large chunk of one of Plath's poems has been transcribed onto the skin. The tattoo includes the entire first stanza of Plath's poem "I Am Vertical," amounting to a total of ten lines.

More from the Free Verse Project

From Ariel by Sylvia Plath, uploaded to Flickr by the Academy of American Poets

From "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath, uploaded to Flickr by the Academy of American Poets

Banana Poetry

Interestingly, modern artists seem to be finding new ways to interpret poetry, including Sylvia Plath's work. Poets.org, which is run by the Academy of American Poets, has dedicated an entire section of its website to the Free Verse Project (also viewable at their Flickr site), in which users can choose a favorite verse, create a visual representation of it, and submit it for display on the Poets.org website.

An example is a quote from Plath's poem "Face Lift," which has been etched into a series of banana peels. Not only does the image correspond nicely with the words (the poetry regarding skin being peeled is carved onto the interior, fleshy skin peeled from the banana), but this is a way to utilize a unique canvas to visually represent Plath's poetry.

Tattoo: "Tulips"

This week: a tattoo featuring a few lines from Plath's poem "Tulips." Interestingly, the three lines used in the tattoo do not appear consecutively in the poem; rather, the person who got this tattoo chose three lines from different stanzas of the poem and intertwined them as stems of literal tulips.