Student poetry inspired by viewing outdoor sculptures found on the Elmira College Campus

Zarathustra by Kosso Eloul

Kosso Eloul created a roughly chiseled, hollow shape, eye-like sculpture. It is meant to direct the spectator’s attention to the concept of the gaze in its various manifestations: art explains the world through observation, a ‘gaze’, and allows itself to gaze inside at itself, and in this case, a symbolic gaze at the landscape.

The Kissing Clothespin

The cracked kissing clothespin stands tall with brittle legs

The two people come together through the gray ocean coral

You can see through the textured and worn eye and look into the lively world

Some see a clothespin and others see two people

--Victoria Beckwith-Strong '29

Ferito by Francesco Somaini

Giulio Carlo Argan described Somaini’s production as “sculpture of the fragment: not of the fragment of something, but the absolute fragment." A similar "Ferito" is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

The Wounded One

Bodies line up on the battlefield.

All are fractured and broken.

Their exterior, seemingly rough

Their inside smooth to the touch.

Like a fossil that has been buried,

soldiers leave a mark in the dirt.

Italian sons’ deteriorating bones scattered

Shattered, the soldiers during war.

Warm metallic copper turned into a teal, faded

Once a lively flower, the bones of the soldiers dry up, preserved.

Lively they were, now turned into dust.

Lives remembered, their lineage carried on.

--Kristen Le '27

The Nude by Alberto Viani

The Museum of Modern Art in New York was one of the first prestigious international museums to acquire one of Viani's works, "Nude" or "Feminine Torso" which is similar to the sculpture in front of McGraw Hall.

I see a sculpture left empty

For his acquaintance is across the sea

Broken and heartless for he is no longer we.

I see someone with a void in their soul

Though when some see him they see no hole

However I know that his heartlessness has taken its toll

For the only one he cared for, now laid upon the knoll

I see a landscape that contains no end

Where it seems to continue after every bend

Yet I march onward to continue

Knowing that everything will be fine as long as I stay true…

Right?

--Gavin Evans '27

Torso by Assen Peikov

In Italy the Bulgarian sculptor Peikov became part of the 20th century upheaval of modern art, but he was dedicated to the principles of figurative art and the images he created resembled classical Roman portraits in both construction and expressivity.

Stone Cold

I see

a twisting torso

torn headless pale and cold

a twisting torso

lifeless alone

a figure carved of stone

a headless human

pale and cold

standing on her own

--Nico Sackett '27

Meier archway Stone carvings by Wayne Ferree

Adorning the exterior of Meier Hall are many limestone relief and three dimensional carvings completed by master stone carver Wayne Ferree, based out of Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania. Wayne started carving on the college’s campus in 1993.

Medieval, a castle's archway

Gothic brick and stone

So delightfully decorated

With fierce and ferocious eagles

Carved irises perching in the corners

Lanterns lighting the lightless arches

A building so ancient in a town so modern

This is Meier Hall: such beauty, design, and

so many memories

--Paige Murray '28

Reclining figure by Fritz Wotruba

Fritz Wotruba (Vienna, Austria, 1907 – 1975) was born to a Czech father and a Hungarian mother. In the early 1920s he trained to be an engraver and took lessons in sculpture under Anton Hanak. He began to work independently as a sculptor in 1927. He first worked in a realist, figurative style in stone and later abstractly in bronze as seen in the Reclining Figure in front of the GTL.

The city is full of cracked stone

worn and gray.

The edges of stone are jagged, sharp and cold.

This city is taking its breath now.

The dust is whispering through the streets of the city

echoes of footsteps that people made.

These echoes of footsteps fade into the dusk of the city.

The city is silent now. Life once pulsed through it, bright and loud in the city.

The city had life. It was full of people and things.

The city is dead now, life does not pulse through the city like old.

--DaeMon Thomas '28

Page updated

Report abuse