Tattoo

Ted Kooser’s “Tattoo” is a 15-line poem that was published in Poetry Magazine in 2003 when Kooser was already well-established and well-respected as an American poet and nonfiction writer. “Tattoo” has been widely anthologized and is indicative of the type of poetry Kooser most often creates. The close observation by an unknown speaker of the man with a tattoo at a yard sale is typical of Kooser’s ability to offer sharp detail and poignant subject matter in a conversational manner. “Tattoo” was included in the collection Delights and Shadows (2004), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 and sold more than 50,000 copies, making it both a critical and popular success. Shortly after, Kooser was named United States Poet Laureate, serving from 2005-2007.

Kooser is considered a poet of the Midwest and was part of the Midwest Poetry Renaissance, a movement which started in the late 1960s and went until the early 1980s. This movement featured poets whose works were centered in the rural regions of the middle states of the United States. This includes the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin) and the Great Plains (Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, the Dakotas, and Kansas). Kooser himself, however, resists identification as solely a regional writer.