ABSTRACT
William Carlos Williams described a poem as ‘a machine made of words’, and in the first part of this chapter I want to look closely at some of these machines of words to discover how they are put together, how they perform as they do and why they are able to attract the attention of readers. As writers we need to learn how poems can be made by looking at certain examples of finished poems, finding out what kind of pleasure they aim to provide and how our imagination is being engaged. One peculiarity about poems is that they can exist in two places: on the printed or handwritten page; and in the air, as sound.
