Edgar Kunz

Edgar Kunz joins us to discuss his debut poetry collection, Tap Out .

Praise for Tap Out

“A whirlwind debut.Stories of sclerotic lives told in wrought images, Kunz arrives with real poetic talent…[he] pulls us into his poems and keeps us there through crisp detail…(A hint: trust poets who show back to you the images you’ve seen in glimpses and tucked in the back of your mind.)…Tap Out lives in a bittersweet world, and does so well, but there’s also fine touches here: a mother who has had enough, a son who sees beauty in loss…”—Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions, “Must Read Poetry”

“There is no ground of existence that does not require (or fail to sustain) its poet. This proposition, requiring continual re-proving, has found again its confirmation in Edgar Kunz’s first book. In the lineage of Levine, Jordan, and Laux, Tap Out presents the data of blows received and taken in fully. Yet these poems do not return blow for blow; they offer instead an unflinching, continued allegiance to abiding connection. Without summation or comment, they remind us that all alchemies of being are possible. Kunz’s precision-tool language of memory and witness enlarges, pivots, pieces together the broken into a world made new, survivable, holdable, forgiven.” — Jane Hirshfield, author of The Beauty and Come, Thief

“Tap Out is an ardent and gorgeous refusal to scorn the aches and wounds that bring us closer to mercy. Rippling with both sorrow and wonder, Edgar Kunz’s narratives sift through the intricacies of masculinity, working-class lives, and abandonment. The telling isn’t singed with nostalgia that obscures pain: his muscular lines make visible the scars that tether the self to hurt, to hope. The language is deftly scored on the page—the diction itself is revelatory. ShopRite. Larch. Chamber-throat. This book reminds us the heart has its own intelligence.” — Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning