Cynthia Marie Hoffman
@cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
1.2K followers 680 following 86 posts
Poet. Exploding Head (an OCD memoir in prose poems), Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, Sightseer. Essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub. (she/her) www.cynthiamariehoffman.com
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cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
Summer is a busy time for filling up classes, but if you know anyone who might be interested in this, I'd love it if you'd share!

Two poems in two hours ! This Sunday!🦋

Write Two: The Prose Poem as Diptych Memoir on Sunday, July 27, from 4-6 PM ET.
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
I blame the root cause of my undying obsession with the poetic series and project books on a creative writing teacher who introduced me to the diptych. Now I want you to to suffer, too! (Ha! I mean... prosper!). And it's just a really cool form.

Would you share with anyone who might be interested?
Reposted by Cynthia Marie Hoffman
byelacey.bsky.social
you don't need chatGPT i am perfectly capable of drinking a bottle of water and lying to you
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
Thank you @litbowl.bsky.social

🌹 ⚡️ 🔪 🐰
litbowl.bsky.social
From @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social's book, Exploding Head.

#poem #books #writing
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
Thank you for sharing this. ❤️ Hoping for better days.
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
I'm in my midlife/ motherhood sad rage era. Thanks to @swwim.bsky.social for giving this one a home.
🔪 🪓 🎸 🖤 🦋
Reposted by Cynthia Marie Hoffman
dorsalstream.bsky.social
For some reason, today seems like a great day to post "You with the Getting Shot" by @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
Poem by Cynthia Marie Hoffman called "You with the Getting Shot"

It is a crisp autumn day when you get shot walking by the parking lot on your way to the lake. An arm goes up. A gun blows a hard kiss. You continue down the path, stepping around the acorns. You already got shot twice this morning. Always, you with the getting shot. You need to just let it pass. The lake goes on dragging the heavens this way and that. Your skin grows over the bullet. You sit at the shore with your back to the park pavilion where someone dismounts a bicycle and pulls out a gun. Over the years, your body has filled like a penny jar with bullets. Someone's creeping through the trees. Your body heavy on the park bench. You watch clouds becoming snarled in the rippling water, angels drowning in their tangled skirts. Someone's breathing down your back. There is no bone left in your body that isn't a clattering procession of bullets. You just need to rest for a bit. One after another, the white knots bob toward the shore but never fully arrive. Even if they did, even if they tumbled gasping at your feet in gauzy threads, you with your buckshot hands, your mind a shuddering animal hunkered down inside your skull, heaven help you, couldn't do a thing about it.
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
With cuts to funding, resources, and rights--writing the disability experience is ever more urgent and necessary.

✨ EXPLODING HEAD✨ is on this Reading List of 7 poetry books for @electricliterature.com, in which @sfmontgomery.bsky.social also talks about her craft book NERVE.

tinyurl.com/4sycj8ph
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
There's still time to register for my zoom workshop Thursday, March 13.
We're going to write sentences and cut up sentences with scissors and talk about this really obvious but mind blowing concept of sentence combining and the infinitely (sort of) generative tool of modifying clauses and anaphora!
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
I'm not! I was in Louisville for the Conference of Literature and Culture and decided I shouldn't miss the cave, even though it turned into an almost ten-hour driving day south and then back up home to Wisconsin!! I'm sure Natural Bridge is amazing, too!
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
Mammoth Cave!
Why are these experiences so brief and hurried and then they're just... over? How am I turning 50 in less than a week? I just want to sit in a dark and quiet cave, alone, just for a minute.
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
I almost didn't write or publish Exploding Head because I thought I had to be "cured" first. It didn't help that an early reader told me I needed (more) therapy. She was not an OCD expert- but had bought into the idea that we write from hindsight with 20/20 clarity and never from the messy middle.
cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social
This advice works well for first books and angry emails- but at a certain point, shouldn't we give ourselves the grace of owning our present selves? We're hopefully always learning and growing, and if we wait until we have the "final answer," guess what? We'll never write.