Excerpt From On The Road by Jack Kerouac

For more photos, click here.

The human heart has always been a favored writing surface. Gods and lovers alike have always dreamt of writing things on the throbbing and absorbent tissue of the heart.  For obvious reasons, if we are looking for writings on the heart, we will have to make do with metaphors. Not so for Eva Talmadge, a writer in brooklyn. She spearheads an unusual writing project. People send in photos of writings etched on their skin. Most of these writings are excerpts of literary pieces–poems, fragments of stories, images inspired by characters in novels, etc. And you can find them in the Word Made Flesh blog. There is also a look book titled,  The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide.  It is:

“a collection of 100 full-color photographs of human skin indelibly adorned with quotations and images from Pynchon to Dickinson to Shakespeare to Plath. Packed with beloved lines of verse, literary portraits, and illustrations — and statements from the bearers on their tattoos’ history and the personal significance of the chosen literary work — The Word Made Flesh is part photo collection, part literary anthology written on skin.”

— Word Made Flesh Blog.