Tap Out: Poems
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“Kunz arrives with real poetic talent.”—The Millions, “Must Read Poetry”
"[A] gritty, insightful debut." —Washington Post
Winner of the 2019 Julia Ward Howe Award for Poetry
Approach these poems as short stories, plainspoken lyric essays, controlled arcs of a bildungsroman, then again as narrative verse. Tap Out, Edgar Kunz’s debut collection, reckons with his working‑poor heritage. Within are poignant, troubling portraits of blue‑collar lives, mental health in contemporary America, and what is conveyed and passed on through touch and words―violent, or simply absent.
Yet Kunz’s verses are unsentimental, visceral, sprawling between oxys and Bitcoin, crossing the country restlessly. They grapple with the shame and guilt of choosing to leave the culture Kunz was born and raised in, the identity crises caused by class mobility. They pull the reader close, alternating fierce whispers and proud shouts about what working hands are capable of and the different ways a mind and body can leave a life they can no longer endure. This hungry new voice asks: after you make the choice to leave, what is left behind, what can you make of it, and at what cost?
- Working-Class Family: Unflinching portraits of a blue-collar New England upbringing, the bonds forged in hardship, and the moments that break them.
- Poems about Masculinity: A visceral exploration of what is passed down from man to man through fists, hard labor, and the things left unsaid.
- Class Mobility: Grapples with the guilt of leaving a life behind, the identity crises that follow, and the impossible question of what is owed to the people and places you escape.
- Narrative Poetry: More like short stories than traditional verse, each poem tells a raw, unforgettable tale of survival, memory, and the search for a place to call home.
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Edgar Kunz is the author of two poetry collections: Fixer (Ecco, 2023), a New York Times Editors’ Choice Book, and Tap Out (Ecco, 2019), which the Washington Post called “a gritty insightful debut.” He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Recent poems appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Poetry, and American Poetry Review. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College.
