I confess that I had never listened to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” all the way through until I read “The Beast in Your Head,” but that didn’t keep me from being drawn into Cynthia Marie Hoffman’s reflection on how the song informed her experience as a teenager with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I admire the way she weaves the song through accounts of both childhood trauma and adult joy.
We’ve scheduled “The Beast in Your Head” for an upcoming issue of the magazine, but we’re sharing this essay early online in celebration of Cynthia’s new memoir in prose poems, Exploding Head, published this month by Persea Books, which further explores the ways OCD has affected her life.
Take care and read well, David Mahaffey, Associate Editor
Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four poetry collections: Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, as well as the chapbook Her Human Costume. Her poems have appeared in Electric Literature, the Believer, the Los Angeles Review, the Missouri Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia received her BA and MFA from George Mason University, and she has taught creative writing and composition at George Mason University, the University of Wisconsin, and Edgewood College. She works at an electrical engineering firm in Madison, Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband and teenage child.
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