Cynthia Marie Hoffman

A graphic featuring a portion of Cynthia Marie Hoffman's poem

A photo of poet Cynthia Marie Hoffman

"I admire the way we’re invited into the speaker’s consciousness, to see her mind at work," says host @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social in today's episode.

Read “Protection Spell Jar" by @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social and our full episode transcript: bit.ly/3J9U8Uw

📖: Persea Books

Thank you so much.

Thank you, @djvorreyer.bsky.social !

Cat and bird.

Write Two: The Prose Poem as Diptych Memoir This is a class in dualities: two forms, two poems. (In two hours!) The two forms: We’ll explore the prose poem (a hybrid of prose and poetry) and the prose poem as memoir (a lyric rendering of a…

Info and registration here:
thenotebookscollective.com/event/write-...

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.

Write Two: The Prose Poem as Diptych Memoir This is a class in dualities: two forms, two poems. (In two hours!) The two forms: We’ll explore the prose poem (a hybrid of prose and poetry) and the prose poem as memoir (a lyric rendering of a…

Friends, we'd love for you to join us for this class on Sunday, July 27th. @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social is teaching Write Two: The Prose Poem as Diptych Memoir and whew, does it promise to be an amazing two hours.

thenotebookscollective.com/event/write-...

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?

you don't need chatGPT i am perfectly capable of drinking a bottle of water and lying to you

Thank you @litbowl.bsky.social

🌹 ⚡️ 🔪 🐰

Thank you for sharing this. ❤️ Hoping for better days.

SWWIM Every Day — SWWIM by Cynthia Marie Hoffman I threw my back out reaching for the knife to cut the waffles for my kid before school. My kid’s a teen already but still scared of the closet. I’m not one to ...

Read (and listen 🎧!) online here: www.swwim.org/swwimeveryda...

I'm in my midlife/ motherhood sad rage era. Thanks to @swwim.bsky.social for giving this one a home.
🔪 🪓 🎸 🖤 🦋

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.

For some reason, today seems like a great day to post "You with the Getting Shot" by @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

Cynthia Marie Hoffman & Sarah Kain Gutowski Poets Cynthia Marie Hoffman and Sarah Kain Gutowski will read from their collected works, with an emphasis on their newest respective collections, both of which are cohesively themed (Cynthia’s is a…

Can't wait to chat with Sarah Kain Gutowski for @notebookscltv.bsky.social Tuesday! We'll read a little, chat a lot, and share what we learned from our year of jointly pitching events and readings and classes! Also, mental health and genre-hopping! Free: thenotebookscollective.com/event/in-con...

Prairie burn.

So, so sorry Maureen.

Art of the Sentence — Lafayette Writers' Studio This isn’t a grammar class. This is an art class. First, we’ll experience how repetitive sentence structure opens our connection to memory free from the distractions of craft. And then, we’ll experim...

Info and registration here: www.lafayettewritersstudio.com/classes/sent...

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!

I've got an essay up on reading Attic Rain, a collection of poems about OCD by @sjonespoet.bsky.social !! Thank you @anmlymag.bsky.social for giving this piece the best home. So much important work here.
💧🙂 📕 @newestpress.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!

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.

Wow. 🤩 Eye-catching!

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.

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.

I think now that I'm about to turn 50, I'm tired of putting my writing in a drawer for 6 months to see if I feel different about it later. I'm ready to trust myself in the present moment and be messy. We can't always live in fear that our future selves will be ashamed of our present selves.... ?

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❤️ Hope you enjoy it!

Floored by this stunning review of EXPLODING HEAD in North American Review!
Thank you to Shannon K. Winston for spending time in deep communication with this book, and for seeing it so clearly. ✨
Read it here: northamericanreview.org/open-space/2...