Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry: Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. Essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Poems in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI. www.cynthiamariehoffman.com.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
When Sightseer won Persea’s Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, it fulfilled my lifelong dream of publishing a book. In that sense, my life was changed. I joined a catalogue of truly wonderful authors, and publishing opened the door to meaningful connections with readers and poets.
But I had a one-year old at home and was fully settled in a non-academic job that had no expectations of me to publish. So my day-to-day remained unchanged. Isn’t that how it is for so many writers, especially poets? Yes, I felt different. This incredible thing I’d worked so hard for over so many years was finally happening! But to my coworkers, and to many of my friends and family, I was the same.
Exploding Head, my newest book, is a memoir in prose poems about my lifelong journey with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), though it doesn’t say “OCD” anywhere in the poems themselves. All four of my full-length collections form cohesive full-length “projects” (if people are still using that word). But Exploding Head is the first book that isn’t heavily based on research, spoken through persona poems, or influenced by historical figures, medicine, or architecture. It’s not only about me, but it’s about a part of me I never talked about before. It’s the most interior, vulnerable thing I’ve ever written.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I loved writing little poems with my mother when I was little. Sometimes we wrote down familiar nursery rhymes and drew pictures to accompany them on the page. Poetry has always been in my life.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Forever. It takes, seemingly, forever. I think I’ve been relatively prolific (compared to what? I don’t know), but each poem I’ve finished has been hard-won. I often start with an idea of the structure of the argument I want to make (first this, then that) or a clear visual like a scene from a movie. Then I have the frustrating task of putting it into words. Words are the hardest (and last) part of the poem to appear. By the time I have a “draft” on the page in a form others can actually read, it’s already in a very late stage of development. All the strands have been combed through, and I’ve just finally braided them together.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I’m working on a book from the very beginning. For a while, poet Nick Lantz and I were curating an interview site on poetry project books called The Cloudy House. It’s still a great resource (with more than 60 interviews!) for anyone who’s thinking about crafting a book-length collection.
I’m more interested in books than I am single poems. I don’t know if that’s been good or bad for my poems that have to go out in the world on their own, but there is always an interdependency at play. I do often revise quite a bit as the final book is coming together. There’s no reason to keep re-establishing setting or identity if you’re building a memoir out of poems—so all those redundancies must be cut if the book is to be successful.
I spent a couple years researching and building a book of poems about tuberculosis, but in the end, I abandoned that project entirely. That’s a risk when you think “book first, poem second.” Those poems about my grandfather in the tuberculosis sanatorium in the early 1940s couldn’t have been easily shuffled into a memoir about OCD.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I do enjoy doing readings. I don’t know that they’re a part of my creative process. It’s rare that I’ll “test” a new poem on a crowd these days. But I used to. I learned how to read in 2-minute open mic slots during my time in London in the late 90s when I was living there on a work visa with another poet, Sarah Kain Gutowski. Then, we read at open mic series in northern Virginia, and I even hosted a reading series in Arlington and later in my MFA program. That early experience shaped my ability to present my work confidently and to use the public space as an arena of experimentation. I’ve learned where certain poems work better off the page: in a quiet library, in a noisy bar, in a big crowd or a small crowd.
The best thing about readings is the immediate connection with the listener. We so rarely have the opportunity to be in the room when our poems are experienced in real-time. I love attending readings, as well. I go to as many as I can (onscreen and off). Writing is such an isolating endeavor. Attending poetry reading is so important for community-building. I love to hear poets read.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
My first three collections explored my relationship to history: as a tourist confronting the history of other countries (Sightseer), as a pregnant woman benefitting from our current day understanding of medicine (Paper Doll Fetus), and as an inheritor of my family history during the genealogical research craze (Call Me When You Want to Talk About the Tombstones).
But Exploding Head is the first book to explore the history of own mind—growing up with undiagnosed OCD and anxiety and finding my way as an adult.
My current work continues this line of questioning about the self. If I’m not writing from research or about others, how can I position the self in my work? It’s a new thing for me to be writing about myself.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
To document the experience of being alive during our time, in whatever big or small ways suit the poet’s skill. Even if we write about past events or speculate about the future, we cannot escape filtering it through the lens of our time. So even if we don’t know it, we’re always doing this work.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Poets have a very different relationship with editors than prose writers. I experienced this firsthand having worked with several editors on essays I published last year. The process made my writing better, and I’ve been thinking about what poets are potentially missing out on by holding our work so close and by editors largely treating it as finished.
I do, however, depend on the feedback from poetry groups assembled from my peers, and to whom I’m indebted for my development as a poet and for rescuing me from writer’s block with the looming force of communal deadlines without which, at some points, I might not have been writing at all.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Advice from my time in gymnastics transfers well to general life and poetry: don’t overthink it; just go for it; let go.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Most of my day has nothing to do with writing. But I try to keep a burner warm. Having a project that extends beyond one-poem-at-a-time really helps me dip in and out. I have a hard time getting started if I have to come up with a new idea each time I sit down to write.
But the fact is, I’m always sitting. I sit to work, I sit to write, I sit to relax. I hope to get back into adult gymnastics again, or at least some more walking. As I’ve worked from home, the lines between work and writing have blurred. I write where I work. Sometimes I write on my work computer. Sometimes I check work emails during my writing time. But mostly, my writing time and work hours don’t conflict; my mind is clearest and most alive late at night, when everything is dark and quiet. That’s when I’m most creative.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I love reading poetry, but if I’m too immersed in the voices of other poets, I tend to lose my own voice. I find inspiration in history, research, interesting science facts. Sometimes, when I feel lost, re-reading my own manuscript helps me remember myself.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
In college, majoring in photography and taking a color printing lab course, I was alone in a small, single-unit darkroom. I opened the drawer of the wooden desk beneath the enlarger, and a familiar scent wafted up to me. It was the fragrance of my grandparents’ home in California, a place I’d visited only a handful of times in my childhood.
I’m not saying, necessarily, that my grandparents’ home smelled like a musty, dusty old wooden drawer in a room of photo paper and chemicals, but all of a sudden, so unexpectedly, there it was—the exact smell. Good thing I was alone in the dark, because the nostalgia came over me so powerfully, I stood there and sobbed.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I’m often inspired by the musicality of natural speech, though I have a tendency to get stuck on repeating certain phrases (as a symptom of OCD) that feels troublesome and not conducive to creativity. I’m always inspired by science, the animal world, our understanding of (and the mysteries of) the universe. Watching documentaries.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The community of writers that form my poetry and essay groups are so important to me. The more recently beloved books on my shelves include Eugenia Leigh’s Bianca and James Davis May’s Unusually Grand Ideas for the way they explore mental health. Though I had finished writing Exploding Head before I discovered these gems, I feel my work has a kinship with these collections, and as I walked the vulnerable road toward publication, I felt their presence farther ahead, having laid the path.
I was heavily shaped by my early learning under Carolyn Forché, both by her own work and by her teaching. She opened her graduate courses to undergraduates, and I was lucky enough to be taking her classes as an undergrad and again, years later, as a graduate student at George Mason University. She introduced me to work in translation and poets I wouldn’t have stumbled upon by myself. And she is the reason I came to love history, a subject I had famously despised for all my schooling years as I was forced to simply memorize dates and names. But Carolyn made history come alive; she made it magical. And suddenly everything made sense—the very reason we view the world as we do today. I feel so, so lucky to have been able to sit in her classrooms.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
See the aurora borealis in its fullest form directly overhead. Sleep overnight in a treehouse. Get my full-twisting back layout all the way around.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Gymnastics coach. Or photographer. In the fourth grade, we each wrote a book of poems and bound them with tape and cardboard and fabric. I still have mine. The “About the Author” page says I wanted to be a photographer. (No mention of being a poet, but I think that was something I didn’t comprehend “being”—it’s just something I was.)
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I became a writer in addition to doing something else (i.e., a paying career). But day-to-day, what makes me write instead of sitting back in the red chair in the corner of the living room with a movie on tv and a cat in my lap? Having a deadline to write something for poetry group, having a community of peers who check in on me (and I on them), and being in the midst of a project that feels obsessive and urgent.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I’m working through a giant stack of books I brought home from AWP and posting about them on Instagram (@cynthiamariehoffman). I’m calling it the “Book Fair Book Haul Crawl” because, let’s be real, it takes time to read all those new books we get so excited about, and there’s no reason to rush through. A few standouts so far have been Lisa Fey Coutley’s Host, Jubi Arriola-Headley’s Bound, and Jenny Irish’s Hatch, but there are so many more, and more that I have yet to read that will certainly be the next great book.
As far as films, I can’t name one. I love movies, and I have a bit of an addiction to movies and tv. I’ll devour almost any movie. But they all kind of meld into a blob in my mind. Probably the result of too much tv.
19 - What are you currently working on?
Essays! In 2023, I made a point of rekindling my first love for the personal essay. I’ve recently published essays on OCD; one in Time Magazine online called My OCD Can’t Keep Me Safe From America’s Gun Violence—But It Tries, and another in The Sun called The Beast in Your Head. And I’d like to keep up my exploration of this form.
I’m also writing poems, but, for the first time, they’re not part of a pre-defined “project.” This has left me feeling lost at sea. But still, I write, hoping one of these poems will become an oar.
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