UB CNF Chapbook of Collected Work Small

7/29/2019 UB CNF Chapbook of Collected Work Small

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Creative Nonfiction:

Memoirs and Dreams

(Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, De Chirico, 1914)

COLLECTED

WORKThe following poetics statements and stories come from a writing workshop called Creative Nonfiction:

Memoirs and Dreams. This collection represents the best work of American Studies MA students at theUniversity of Bucharest where I had the opportunity and privilege to teach as a

Fulbright Scholar 2012-2013.

Gene Tanta, Editor.

July 03, 2013 Bucharest, Romania


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Creative

Nonfiction:

Memoirs and

Dreamswas a writing workshop organized around onequestion: how does remembering relate to imagining? Our course investigated the question ofhow recollection relates to daydreaming with the idea in mind that an echo is never a perfect

reproduction of the original sound. Thus, mimesis does not mean copying naturemimesis

means becoming nature by doing and redoing. Recognizing that one is, at least partly, the result

of a series of choices is the vital first step to moving beyond the familiar comforts of

remembering to the strange perils of imagining. While, indeed as we learned together, imagining

has its potential dangerslike feeling judged, vulnerable, and unsure, it also has its potential

pleasureslike feeling satisfaction, sharing visions, and moving readers.

Memoir has a bit of a bad reputation as a self-indulgent and cloying sub-genre as DorothyParker points out by saying: "All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I

wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me." Friedrich Nietzsche offers a more

earnest solution to wallowing in self-pity and over-familiar language: The man who is

responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality

of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that

he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life. Aleksandar Hemon offers

another way to avoid the solipsism that is killing so much of contemporary confessional memoir:

Whatever experience you may have had, whatever stories you might have to tell about yourself,

they have to be transformed into something that's meaningful beyond yourself. And because it's

transformed at some point, it stops being about you. Together, as I hope you will agree

enthusiastically, these courageous and avidly curious students were able to transform parts of

their lives into literaturewhether comic, scary, traumatic, embarrassing, lovingby payingcareful attention to the language they choose to convey their memories and dreams. While

primarily focused on writing and rewriting original texts based on memories and dreams,

however we also read writers such as: John Ashbery, Toi Derricotte, Gabriel Garcia Marquez,

Michel de Montaigne, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf.


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Writers:

Al-Ghawi Ranya

Bunget Florina Madalina

Catana Adela-Livia

Contes Diana Alexandra

Ene Cristina Ioana

Geambasu Anca-Gabriela

Mihai Alexandra-Ioana

Mihailescu Cristina Alina

Petrea Gregoria-Teodora

Piciorus Laura-Georgiana

Pirnoiu Anca

Silvas Laura Maria

Tatarus Ioana Andreea


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Documents

UB CNF Chapbook of Collected Work Small