Sitting and Thinking

I've realize that a large part of my thesis woes stem from the fact that though I'm reading a lot, I'm thinking very little.  I quickly run through the material, make a few cursory/obvious notes, then set the article/poem/novel/treatise, aside.  Then I wonder why I haven't learned much. 

What I need is a good old fashioned thinking session.  The problem is, so much of my life (our collective 'America in the 21st Century' life?) doesn't encourage lingering over a single poem, or a single couplet of a poem to find out how the words work, or if I find it moving and how.  Everything I read online (where I jump from window to window, tab to tab, trying to quickly absorb as much material as possible) tells me how to speed read, how to multi-task, how to get the most done in the shortest amount of time.  Don't think (too hard), just do.  Rush rush rush to get it all done.  And so, slowing down, especially when I don't know how beneficial-- or at least, when I can't quantify how beneficial-- that lingering might be... it becomes very difficult.  But I've made next to zero progress (by word count, page number, outlines) on my thesis, and even though I've read a lot I haven't processed it in a way that feels worthwhile.  But instead of trying to take the time to process it, I've just kept looking for more sources to read in the hopes that one of them will make me feel like I've hit the thesis jackpot.  Maybe I already have, I just haven't thought about it enough to realize it.

So this week: I'm thinking.  I'm going back over poems I've read; I'm close-reading.  I'm looking for moments of brilliance and moments of connection-- both to eighteenth-century society/movements and to my own emotions.  My adviser told me that literary criticism should be analytical and emotional, as if the two were not usually viewed as opposites.  My thesis class professor told me that her graduate adviser told her that each project needed to be personally meaningful and to help her learn a new skill set.  For me, reading eighteenth-century poetry (actually, reading most poetry) feels a bit like reading another language, and it's a skill I want to learn.  So, I'm ignoring secondary sources for a bit so I can determine what I personally think, instead of relying on other critics and scholars to tell me what to think.  I'm going to try to learn the art, mystery, and skill of reading poetry in an analytical way.  I'm looking for what moves me and trying to figure out why.

And I'm going to write it down.