[My Tattoo] by Erin M. Bertram

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this poem; there are some qualities about it that I really like, and a few that I am not so fond of. The poem is filled with great decriptions of the tattoo, such as "Wingspan flared feral, silent suspension / between alight & arrival, always impending, always / already there." Interestly, since the poem is completely about her tattoo, I can see a lot of similarities between this poem and another that we read earlier in the semester, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens. Much like the Stevens poem, Bertram provides several different "ways" of looking at this tattoo, which I think is a really unique idea.

She uses a few subtle examples of alliteration in the poem, such as "silent suspension / between alight and arrival," though I think some more examples of alliteration or consonance might have made the poem sound more "energetic." To me, her form does not seem to accomplish much; she uses three-line stanzas, each broken up by a single space. There are no indented lines, or "tricky" line breaks which keep the reader alert, which I am a big fan of and would have liked to have seen in this poem. The very last line in the poem, " amid a whirl of otherwise dynamic, unchanging heat," stands by itself, which I really liked because it made me ponder an "alternative" meaning for the poem, though I can't really think of one that makes sense. Finally, I think the title of the poem, [My Tattoo], is way too obvious. Many of the words she uses in the poem, such as "forearm, ink, lines sketched, and drawn," convey the "tattoo" theme quite well, so in my opinion, the title really spoils the rest of the poem.