S. deStaebler sculpture, Left-sided Angel - Poetry about the sculpture

Murals & other art | Sculpture & architecture | Japanese American concentration camp art

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		Stephen deStaebler sculpture, Left-sided Angel


	About the sculpture

›	Poetry about the sculpture

S. deStaebler sculpture, Left-sided Angel - Poetry about the sculpture

In 1992, the University Museums commissioned ISU poet Neal Bowers to write about the angel as part of the Art on Campus Poetry program.

Petition to remove a statue by Neal Bowers

Hunk of shrapnel!
Pile of mangled bronze!
We want him down from his one-foot poise.

Victory should be maimed
but beautiful, not banged-up
with barely a leg to stand on.

One wing clipped, the other gone,
how he deforms the whole environment,
warps the air itself with absences.

If sculpture is pure form,
or its pursuit, then this nightmare
comes as close to art

as any freeway accident,
with us out in the bushes
looking for the missing limbs.

We want to make him whole,
in his own perfect image; we want
him far less human than he is;

but since we cannot heal him,
and since he wears our wounds so openly,
by God, we'll have this unright angel down!

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