“The Importance of the Screw”

“The Importance of the Screw” by Ann Weil was created from Steam Turbines by Hubert E. Collins (McGraw-Hill Book Company 1909). To read the poem, please click here.

About the poem and the process of composing it, Ann writes:

For this poem I focused on several paragraphs from the chapter entitled “The Curtis Steam Turbine in Practice.” I perused the text, making a list of words and phrases that stood out to me as linguistically interesting, open to interpretation, and prone to double meaning. I then culled the initial list down to the 8 lines you see. I am intrigued by how this piece can be interpreted in multiple ways, including erotically, especially given the original subject matter. These discoveries of language and ideas embedded in unexpected places are what draws me to found poetry—my version of panning for gold.