Advance Praise:
In poetry that draws on memoir, interviews, customer questionnaires, Havelock Ellis, descriptions of prison tats, and local legal codes, Donovan Hufnagle shows us how tattoos are life stories in the flesh. Using language that is always interesting, even astounding, he demonstrates the ways tattoos function as metaphors and metonym: we want to make our plans indelible, later to find them in need of revision, deletion, or acceptance. -Joseph Harrington, author of Of Some Sky and Things Come On (an amneoir)
Donovan Hufnagle has assembled a careful poetic ethnography of tattooed bodies and the stories that they tell. Just as the tattoo inscribes meaning on the body, this book elegantly reveals the stories that only the body can tell. It is a book that connects tattoo adorned bodies to a profound human truth: we are each other’s mirrors, and the artful inscriptions of our bodies connect us to each other in ways that transcend political and social divides. This is an urgent book that does what only the best poetry can do; it opens spaces for conversation, connection, and healing. -Kristin Prevallet, author of I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time
There is nothing more intimate than skin. In this way, Donovan Hufnagle’s latest poetry collection is staggeringly intimate. In it we find ourselves rifling through the back-office desk in the tattoo parlor, uncovering the story of skin in the artifacts, scraps, and half-thoughts we find there. Raw is a mythic space of tattoos, artists, and their stories. A tattoo-artist narrator in one poem tells us the secret he’s keeping from the girl considering the dragonfly tattoo, that “ink cuts away your flesh. I cut and burn you.” In this strikingly intimate space, we discover a truth only poetry can tell. The truth is that this will fuck us up, it will hurt, and we will be scarred for life. Like ink that tunnels through flesh, Hufnagle’s poems leave channels in the mind. Rivers of truth that allow us to consider the nature of skin, and pain, and the desire
“Can I see your tattoos?” He asks.
I hold my left arm out as a stranger intensely admires the ink that swims within my skin.
“What do they mean?”
“Each fish represents a different blues musician.” I reply. “The Blow Fish with glasses is Blind Lemon Jefferson. The Angler is Lead Belly….” I hold out my right arm. “The superheroes represent my children.”
And so on.
This interaction showcases a typical conversation I might have once a week with a stranger. I am a walking gallery with tattoos as the showpieces. And the uniqueness of this art, being able to tell my own story and how tattoos tell many stories was one of the catalysts into writing my book of poetry.
So, what stories do your tattoos tell?
Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of is a poetic scrapbook investigating the universal narratives of tattoos. Through the voice of artist or canvas, survivor or prisoner, you or I—the collection captures the personal and shared accounts of the people part of the tattoo ethos. As poet Kristen Prevallet says, the book is “a careful poetic ethnography of tattooed bodies and the stories that they tell.”
The poems are inspired by interviews, found materials, notes, and personal anecdotes. The poems also include and are juxtaposed with some of those same materials. The beauty of documentary poetry is that it is not only inspired by actuality, but it also integrates it. Raw Flesh Flash is not just a piece of art, part of the poetic world, but also an archive, documenting glimpses of the tattoo world, a world that is ever increasing, moving, and expanding.
The book, as the title suggests, breathes in the rawness and unfinished evolution of tattoos and its culture, like the healing of a new tattoo as well as with the idea that poetry is never complete. And like tattoo flash, the poetry in this collection is glimpses, flashes of connections, baring “tattoo adorned bodies to a profound human truth: we are each other’s mirrors, and the artful inscriptions of our bodies connect us to each other in ways that transcend political and social divides.”
And how tattoos express stories through image, how they elicit an emotional response, the poems similarly tell stories though image, provoking an emotional reply. Each poem evokes a poetic energy while telling a tale, a tale that only skin or poetry can express. Author Susan Norman says, “there is nothing more intimate than skin. In this way, …[the] collection is staggeringly intimate.” She continues by stating, “we discover a truth only poetry can tell. To wet the beak, the first poem, “I Tell Them Ink is Mightier Than Pen and Sword,” explores pain. Pain is a necessary ritual when it comes to tattoos. We could possibly argue all art requires some ritual of pain, some sacrifice. If you have ever been inked with a tattoo, the truth is, they hurt. If you are thinking about having a tattoo adorned on your body, know that the pain is an essential part of the process, a necessity. The poem, then discusses this public ritualistic stipulation but, also, taps into the personal journey connected to pain. Here is a line from the poem:
I want to say it hurts everywhere:
The pulse from the vibrating gun in my hand;
the Hydrocodone I take each morning just to hunch over
another thigh for five hours;
The disappointment in my mother’s eyes.
Other poems paint pictures of tattoo artists, and tattoo clients, prisoners, Holocaust survivors, personal and so on. Each tattoo as with each poem paints a personal journey, journeys, I think, we all can resonate with whether we have tattoos or not. I think, as Prevallet states, Raw Flesh Flash “opens spaces for conversation, connection, and healing.”
donovanhufnagle.com @donovanhufnagle
Donovan Hufnagle is a husband, a father of three, and a professor of English and Humanities. He moved from Southern California to Prescott, Arizona to Fort Worth, Texas. His new poetry collection, Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Of, is a poetic scrapbook of interviews, poetry, and documents about the universal narrative of tattoos He also has three other poetry collections: The Sunshine Special, a “part personal narrative, epic poem, and historical artifact;” Shoebox, an epistolary, poetic narrative about Juliana’s “past and present, love and lack, in language that startles;” and 30 Days of 19, inverted Haiku poems juxtaposed to Trump tweets, capturing the first thirty days of the Covid-19 quarantine. Other recent writings have appeared in The Closed Eye Open, Tempered Runes Press, Solum Literary Press, Poetry Box, Beyond Words, Wingless Dreamer, Subprimal Poetry Art, Americana Popular Culture Magazine, Shufpoetry, Kitty Litter Press, Carbon Culture, Amarillo Bay, Borderlands, Tattoo Highway, The New York Quarterly, Rougarou, and others.
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What a great guest post. Thanks for sharing it.
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