Seth Bouchard doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve – but he does wear Edgar Allan Poe.
The Wine Ambassador at High Country Wine and Provisions in Highlands carries a literary gallery on his left arm, an intricately inked sleeve inspired by Poe’s dark, dreamlike stories.
From the mournful Raven perched in silhouette to the chilling imagery of The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher, Bouchard’s tattoos are more than body art – they’re narrative.
“I’ve always seen tattoos as a form of expression and displaying things you’re passionate about,” explains the 27-year-old Army veteran from Granite Falls, North Carolina. His journey into ink began in 2020, shortly after his military deployment ended, when he decided to transform three years of planning into permanent art.
The left sleeve, completed in two months in 2020, showcases Poe’s most iconic works through intricate detail.
“Poe has always been one of my favorite authors,” he says. “They all tell a story, and his work is about perspective – how we choose to see and respond to the world. Take The Raven: on a surface level it’s about a depressed character, but if you dive deeper, it’s about how you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to the world.”
The ambitious sleeve required multiple sessions per week with artist Zack Smith of Dragon’s Den Tattoo Company in Granite Falls.
Seth Bouchard
“Zack is incredibly creative,” Bouchard says. “You bring him an idea, and if you don’t know the design, he’ll create one specific to you – an original that can’t be found on Pinterest.”
The only non-Poe piece on his left arm is a compass – a reflection of his military service as a 13 Fox, a fire support specialist and forward observer.
“We did land navigation, and dealt with maps and compasses,” he explains. There’s also a fox tattoo, a nod to his military occupational specialty.
With the Poe sleeve complete, Bouchard turned to his right arm, now choosing symbols of resilience and memory: a lion and lamb to mark shared March birthdays with his sister; an ankh entwined with a thorned rose to reflect life’s beauty and struggle; and wolfsbane, chosen during a dark period, as a symbol of healing and protection.
There’s also a hummingbird, a tribute to childhood and home, and a Lord of the Rings motif – his mother’s favorite. A rose on his hand encapsulates his worldview: that life is always a tangle of thorn and bloom.
“I’m not hasty with tattoos,” he says. “Each one is a story I’ve carried for years.”
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