The Projectionist's Nightmare: Reality and Fabrications Nemo Ali 11th Grade

In "The Projectionist's Nightmare," Patten crafts q depiction of a 'projectionist's nightmare' through the very vivid and graphic as well as aural imagery in a short free-verse poem. Thus, this text perfectly manifests the sense of horror and anxiety that the projectionist must feel, juxtaposing reality and the fabricated reality of the cinema.

The poem is short and in just four sentences - however, the varying lengths and the very vivid portrayal of ideas show how intense this 'nightmare' is. The sense of a sequence in the long sentence that depicts the actual 'nightmare' - 'A bird finds its way into the cinema...' - shows how well thought through it is, how the projectionist must have had thought about this idea such that they can perfectly sequence it. This also builds up a sense of anticipation for the next part of the nightmare, making the poem more vivid. The poem is free-verse with no constant metre or rhyme, which shows how the projectionist would have just written it in a flurry of anxiety and horror without paying much attention to the structure, adding to that effect of anguish and horror. The enjambment in 'slither down the likeness of a tree' and the otherwise scattered punctuation add to the idea of horror - there...