Since I still don't have any chairs to go around my kitchen table, I've moved it into the living room and turned it into a catch-all for my paper-writing paraphernalia: library books, drafts, post-its, and...I don't know what the calculator is doing there.
As you can see, I'm writing about Dorothea Lasky's AWE for my contemporary poetry class. I have mixed feelings about this book. (Oh! I just realized I had a dream about Lasky last night. That's my first author dream ever. I think we were doing a reading together. Anyway.) There are some poems that I just read and think, Huh? You got this published? For example, there's this: "You are so summery / You summery summery love." And then there are poems that I love, that floor me and make me sad, and I think that's what she wants. There's rarely anything exciting happening with the language in Lasky's work, at least not on the surface, and images are often lost in the exclamatory silliness of things like summery summery love. But I've spent weeks with this book, read it and reread it, and it continues to haunt me. It has something to say. I just have to figure out what that something is.
And thus we come to my post title today: A different kind of thesis freak out. I'm not talking about a master's thesis, just a tiny little thesis statement. Or, to be true to how I'm feeling now, the one sentence that makes or breaks a paper. The one sentence that is escaping me despite the fact that I have more complete rough drafts for either of these papers than I've ever had before (which is to say I don't usually make it past the first draft with term papers because I wait so long to start them).
I have no idea what my point is, what I'm arguing, why it matters...and so these papers are going no where, even though they keep getting longer as I meander through my sources and my notes. I really, really need to figure out what my damn arguments are.
Wish me luck...
ghosts of septembers past
17 hours ago
5 comments:
Order yourself to dream the answer before you go to bed, so it comes to you in your sleep. Good luck!!
I'm having the same kind of problem with a paper right now. I had to turn in a draft of it and am embarrassed to have other people read it because I don't know what I'm saying still.
Let me give you this little piece of advice...FOCUS. It's a thing I myself could never do. Writing a thesis statement was bad enough and then to have to expound upon it...I know where you're coming from and I commiserate with you.
I only have an MFA--I can't imagine the sheer torture of getting a Ph. D. Maybe poets are too scattered to do these dang literary papers that are so constrictive for our wild and wonderful hearts and minds!
Relax. Have a glass of vino and like Nic Sabastian said in his comment--ask for the answer in a dream before going to sleep. Believe me, that sometimes is the key to an answer.
Come visit our writing website:
www.screwiowa.com
Read two poets we've just posted: Jim Brock and Michael Hettich.
Good luck with the paper..if nothing comes of it, you can always write a poem about writing a paper...
Whoa...there was another post here and then it disappeared. :P
Which post, Maya? My page has been loading kind of weird lately, but if I hit the refresh button, everything goes back to where it should be.
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