Artwork Information

  • Title:

    Dragon Fly

  • Artist:

    Steuben Glass, A Division of Corning Glass Works, manufacturer 1958–2011; Bruce Moore, designer

  • Artist Bio:

    American, 1905–1980

  • Date:

    1965

  • Medium:

    Engraved glass

  • Dimensions:

    9 7/8 x 8 3/4 x 2 1/8 inches

  • Credit Line:

    Wichita Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. E.V. Yingling

  • Object Number:

    1965.2

  • Display:

    Not Currently on Display


About the Artwork

In 1961 the Steuben Glass Company enlisted the cooperation of The Poetry Society of America in the creation of unique crystal designs. They named the project Poetry in Crystal. The Poetry Society invited thirty-one poets to submit new, hitherto-unpublished poems to the Steuben Company. The only restrictions were that the poems were not to be about glass or crystal; they had to be no fewer than eight nor more than forty lines in length. Copies of the completed poems, minus the poets’ names, were given to Steuben glass designers and artists to review. Either the glass designer or the artist selected a poem for interpretation. Either one could take the initiative and call the other in for collaboration in the development of a crystal design to visualize the chosen poem.

George Thompson designed the glass form and Bruce Moore created the engraving design for The Dragon Fly. It was inspired by a poem written by Louise Bogan.

You are made of almost nothing

But of enough

To be great eyes

And diaphanous double vans:

To be ceaseless movement,

Unending hunger,

Grappling love.

Link between water and air,

Earth repels you.

Light touches you only to shift into iridescence

Upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator,

You split into the heat.

Swift beyond calculation or capture

You dart into the shadow

Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.

But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,

For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall

With the other husks of summer.