Dorothy Parker's Elbow

Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos

By: Kim Addonizio, Cheryl Dumesnil

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Paperback | 1 October 2002 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
288 Pages

Age
13+

Dimensions(cm)
20.32 x 12.7 x 1.85

Paperback

$48.75

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One the province of sailors and bikers, tattoos have emerged from backdoor parlors to suburban shopping malls. Today they adorn starlets' ankles, housewives' shoulders, and bankers' biceps. Fashionable? Most definitely, Respectable? Not always. Evocative, transformative, still dangerous? Just ask many of our most gifted writers across several colorful decades, who have found the images of the tattoo needle a vivid subject for the language of the pen. Brought to you by two editors who are themselves widely praised (and proudly tattooed) authors, these stories, poems, and memoirs span the range of human experience, from the awesome to the absurd. From Flannery O'Connor's likeness of God to Sylvia Plath's fifteen-dollar eagle, from Herman Melville's power of the primitive to Mark Doty's embrace of the ineradicable to Franz Kafka's lasting mark of the penal colony, this bold exploration of the illuminated body is guaranteed to get under your skin.

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Introduction	p. xiii
from The Illustrated Man	p. 1
A Toda Maquina	p. 7
Grapefruit Flesh	p. 24
Blackie, the Electric Rembrandt	p. 37
My Tattoo	p. 38
To the Engraver of My Skin	p. 41
Dyeing a Three-Dollar Bill	p. 42
from "The White Knights"	p. 48
Skin	p. 52
"When I was a kid..."	p. 53
For Lysa, Who Tattoos Me in Her Miami Living Room	p. 54
Lace	p. 56
Triangle Tattoo	p. 58
It's Bad Luck to Die	p. 59
from The Tattoo Hunter	p. 78
Incision	p. 80
"After the surgery ..."	p. 81
First Poem for You	p. 82
Snakes	p. 83
Parker's Back	p. 84
"In 1992, I had the tattoo on my arm redone ..."	p. 109
Zowie	p. 111
"I got my tattoo at a time of great upheaval ..."	p. 126
"I'd wanted to get one for years ..."	p. 127
Tattoo Pantoum	p. 129
It Only Hurts a Little	p. 133
Tattoos	p. 141
from Typee	p. 153
from 7 Tattoos	p. 160
Embellishments	p. 168
Tattoo Thoughts	p. 171
The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle	p. 173
Herstory	p. 190
"I bring my book--prepared to wait ..."	p. 193
from Tree	p. 194
Becoming Bird	p. 196
Designing a Bird from Memory in Jack's Skin Kitchen	p. 198
Second Skin	p. 200
Portrait	p. 202
"When I muse about tattoos ..."	p. 205
In the Penal Colony	p. 206
Convict K00457	p. 239
Mando	p. 241
The News	p. 248
The Y	p. 250
from "The Life and Death of Philippe"	p. 251
True Tattoo	p. 252
"I do not have a tattoo ..."	p. 253
Wings, Fish, Star	p. 254
Benediction	p. 256
Contributors	p. 258
Permissions	p. 263
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Dorothy Parker's Elbow

Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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