Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones: Poems

by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

“Hoffman uses research extensively, and it adds a depth and range…that many contemporary poets do not achieve.”― Foreward Reviews In this book-length poetry sequence, a mother inherits a leather box that was her grandmother’s. Her daughter joins her on a reconstruction of family history. Together they traipse through graveyards and sift through endless photos and clippings, piecing together what used to be in order to understand who they are.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published July 3, 2018

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

[Christopher Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?” ― Irvin D. Yalom

I'm not a poetry fan, so I'm unsure what about this book called to me. I am glad I was though, as this is a beautiful little volume, written in free verse, in which a mother and daughter attempt to retrace their family history through old photos, letters, and historical records. We all want to know more about our ancestors, but we often never spend the time truly looking into who these people were and what their lives were like. Don't we all want to be remembered?

[Paul Quick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has written a book about a very difficult subject. I believe she reflected her feelings clearly in the book.