Exploding Head

by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

A vivid memoir-in-prose-poems about life with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) from Cynthia Marie Hoffman, author of Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer. This collection of prose poems chronicles a woman’s childhood onset and adult journey through obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which manifests in fearful obsessions and counting compulsions that impact her relationship to motherhood, religion, and the larger world. Cynthia Marie Hoffman's unsettling, image-rich poems chart the interior landscape of the obsessive mind. Along with an angel who haunts the poems' speaker throughout her life, she navigates her fear of guns and accidents, fears for the safety of her child, and reckons with her own mortality, ultimately finding a path toward peace.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir

64 pages, Paperback

Published February 6, 2024

About the author

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry: Exploding Head (Feb 2024), Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Essays have appeared in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Poems have appeared in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI. Learn more at www.cynthiamariehoffman.com.

Reviews

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most seen a poetry collection has ever made me feel. Perfectly describes in stunning language the mind of a person living with OCD.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exploding Head
(your head explodes
(and asks how dark,
(how dense
(your darknesses,
(whether you can cast them off
(and what would happen next))))))

Poems that lead
(into a mind
(are poems that feel
(like this:)))

Have you been here
(all along;
(have we))?

Tell me,
(please:
(is “suddenly
(and unexpectedly”
(the way you want
(to die
(as well))))))?

Do you set off bombs
(in your own brain)?

Do you lift your head up
(willingly
(to slip the collar on;
(do you welcome it,
(or do you turn
(away)))))?

Are you “innocent
(of all the violent things
(your thoughts imagine
(doing”)))?

Talk about a time
(when you had to face the facts
(or pay
(the price,
(or be the one
(to lurk
(within the margins))))))

Creep up
(gently
(on the shadows,
(it’s your turn
(to give
(the scare;
(be on a roll,
(reversed—
(beware,
(and look
(alive))))))))))

Bend me over
(easy,
(do your worst
(you’d better
(make it good;
(you make your worst
(your best))))))

What I’m saying,
(what I want is:
(give me your best
(worst)))

Read these,
(let your head
(explode;
(to be reborn
(you’ve got to die
(once
(first))))))

[Rebecca Jamieson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, eerie, and vulnerable. From the sinister angels haunting the speaker’s sleep, to the potent images of tenderness and violence, to the deft navigating of the prose poem form, there is so much to savor in Hoffman’s collection. Exploding Head is a book of poems I know I will return to again and again, noticing and appreciating something new each time.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Face Has Seven Holes

Someone is talking to you. Look at her face when she’s talking to you. Draw a star. Start with the right nostril. Draw a line to the left ear, across to the right eye, down to the mouth, left eye, right ear, left nostril. You are a child, and the face has seven holes. Blink on it. Seven blinks. Her deep black eyes. One two three four moving mouth. Five six seven. In gym class, a volleyball hits you in the face. Your eye swells. “Is that why you’re blinking so much,” someone says. She leans her face in. Seven fourteen twenty-one twenty-eight this behavior is evident. You look like an idiot. Thirty-five forty-two forty-nine. Her moving lips. Fifty-six sixty-three her face has seven holes. Seventy. Did she say something? Draw a star. Blink on it.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of prose poems about the poet's obsessive-compulsive disorder, and how this colors her entire world.

from The Music of Language is Clamping Down Hard: "But the music of language is opening up for you. The music of language is clamping down hard."

from Scar: "It was exhausting being good. Even now, all these years later, you are still tired. Your hand still bears the scar, a thin white wave cresting."

from This is All True: "Don't blink while looking at something upsetting, like knives or illness or graves. Blinking seven times memorizes the faces of the people you love... Everything can be taking away in a blink. This could be your last day of freedom."

[Sara Moore Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure I’ve ever found a book to be so relatable and still so surprising and illuminating. These tight prose poems are written in the second person in such an expert way. I found myself gasping the whole way through. I had to sit with this one a long time, and I can see myself returning to it over and over again. It’s stunning!

[Violeta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is such a master class in world-building, strange-ing the ordinary into leaping imagery, and ordering towards an arc. Not easy subject matter but told in a way that lifts it from feeling hopeless.

[Sarah Peecher · Rating 5 out of 5]

some of the most engaging prose poems i’ve read — so much surprising, dreamlike/nightmarish imagery. love the overarching narrative which kept me really engaged throughout since this is a biggish collection.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

the BEST book I've read about mental health. For me, with spiraling anxiety, Cynthia made me feel like I wasn't alone.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this book, Hoffman pushes the prose poem form into gorgeous, lyric places. Her poetry collections have always been centered around haunting images and precise music, and this latest does not disappoint. EXPLODING HEAD will resonate especially with those for whom anxieties and fears too-often overwhelm, threaten, or distort one's experience of (and with) the world.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times this felt like a transcription of my own exploding head, and I’m grateful to have been given language for an experience I’ve struggled my entire life to articulate.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the poems hit hard and others I really struggled to understand even after re-reading several times. The imagery was definitely beautiful, though.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Somewhere off the road, a fire burns, and you are not you again today”


A stunningly beautiful exercise in validation and exposure therapy.

[Miriam Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.

[Quynh Meeks]

wow i feel insane