Tap Out: Poems – Julia Ward Howe Award Winner: Gritty Narrative Verse on Heritage, Shame, and Class Mobility

by Edgar Kunz

"Charts the gritty, physical terrain of blue-collar masculinity."―New York Times New & Noteworthy  “Kunz arrives with real poetic talent.”—The Millions, “Must Read Poetry” "[A] gritty, insightful debut." —Washington PostWinner 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 after you make the choice to leave, what is left behind, what can you make of it, and at what cost? 

Genres: Poetry, Family, Nonfiction

115 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2019

About the author

Edgar Kunz is the author of Fixer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023) and Tap Out (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019). He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. New poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, POETRY, and Oxford American. He lives in Baltimore.

Reviews

[Ken]

When your average reader thinks of the word “poetry,” he doesn’t think of the word “macho” at the same time. And yet, macho poetry exists. That is, if you’re willing to bend “macho” from its negative connotations and tag along instead with Edward Hirsch’s description of Edgar Kunz’s Tap Out –- “gutsy, tough-minded, working-class poems of memory and initiation.”

Then there’s Tap Out’s cover. A man’s hands clasped. True, they’re so greasy they look less like a wrestler’s hands than a miner’s or auto mechanic’s, but they certainly convey the idea. What’s most important, though, are the poems in this 2019 outing. Y-chromosome or no, many are damn good.

For instance, Kunz mines the tried and true (for poets) territory of an alcoholic, abusive father to good effect. I was especially taken with “Close,” which originally appeared, appropriately enough, in Narrative magazine.

 

Close

Off early from B&R Diesel, sharp
with liquor and filtered Kings, he drifts
across the double-yellow, swings
into an iced-over lot. He runs me through
the basics: K-turn, parallel, back-in.
Jerks the Sierra into reverse and eases
the bumper up against the side
of the old bank building. We meet
at the end of the loaded bed, exhaust
and brakelight pooling around our knees.
He balls the front of my coat in his fist,
pulls me close to show the distance
between bumper and brick, pulls hard
until I’m up against the slender arc
of his collarbone, the fine dark stubble
shading his jaw, his hollowed-out cheeks.
He’s still beautiful, my father. Fluid.
Powerful. His bare forearms corded
with muscle, bristling in the cold. Yes,
he’s drunk. Yes, I have already begun the life-
long work of hating him, a job
that will carve me down to almost
nothing. I have already begun to catalog
every way he has failed me. Yes.
And here he is. Home early from a day shift
in Fall River. Teaching me what I need
to know. Pulling me roughly toward him,
the last half-hour of sunlight blazing
in his face, saying This is how close
you can get. Asking if I can see it.
If I know what he means. Saying This. This
close. Like this.

 

Like many poems in this collection, a narrative poem told with economy. A vivid snapshot in time. “Close” is particularly powerful thanks to the turn that begins with the line “He’s still beautiful, my father” – not words you’d expect from a teen whose father has him by the fist. And that bit about “the life- / long work of hating him, a job / that will carve me down to almost / nothing.” Whew. It’s lines like this that leave me wondering why there are so many readers who do not bother reading poetry, for it is only poetry that can deliver rabbit-punches like this. What these readers are missing!

While still on my heels from reading “Close,” I turned the page and read “After the Attempt,” which appeared originally in Gulf Coast. In this case, it was the closing that wowed me. Kunz nails the landing, as they say. Even the Russian judge is forced to say as much.

If interested in the remainder of this review and the poem "After the Attempt," jump over to the post on my website: https://www.kencraftauthor.com/knock-...

[Bobbieshiann · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When he held up his hands to mine, palm to palm. Nail beds packed with grease. Knuckles more scare than skin. When he said I had piano hands, and I was ashamed, and hid them in the pockets of my coat”.
These are poems that read to me like stories. Poems that painted a picture I was able to visualize as I read each line. With these poems, Edgar Kunz touches on so many things (loss, lack of relationships, alcoholism, separation, mental health, struggle of everyday living, and much more). What really took me over was his experiences with his dad. It is saddening but passionate as you see him still hold on to a piece of his dad even after disappoint or anger consumes him. His friendship with his friends is pretty amazing as you watch them encounter dangerous and fun things together but you get to experience the bond and separation as they drift apart. A quick read but I took my time with it and it was worth it.

[Jerrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great poetry collection that mainly explores his childhood and early adult years, more specifically his love and dissatisfaction with his father. While on their surface these poems seem to have a macho aesthetic, underneath they are filled with love and despair for the people and places of his youth. There are some really well-drawn poems about the New England working class and towns that are struggling in the current economy.

[Derek White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the poems about his childhood and early life, though all poems telling the story of him and his father relationship. You could feel the emotions and frustrations in poems such as Natick or Close. I really enjoyed this collection and will be exploring more by Kunz.

[Paris (parisperusing) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a faultless body of work, start to finish. Edgar Kunz's Tap Out pores over so many unflinching recollections of sonhood, repentance, abandonment, love lost and salvaged — each bearing the same weight that brings you to your knees.

I loved the unabashed intimacy depicted between father and son, friends and brothers, in poems like “After the Hurricane,” “Deciding,” and “Close.” The resounding contrition expressed in “Dry Season,” a beautifully vulnerable soft spot on a failed marriage that reappears all throughout this collection. I love Kunz's constant reflections on his aging father, who stops at nothing to win the affection of his boys despite his misgivings. I cried for the author’s escape from what remains of Natick for a life struggle-free; a twin plight we share. There was only a cupful of poems I did not connect to as profoundly as others, and that is okay; every great collection has its trove of secrets. Kunz hides his well, though such mysteries are spared in "Tap Out" and “My Father at 23, on the Highway Side of an Overpass Fence” — two harrowing testaments of strength and weakness at once. My favorites of them all.

Kunz’s memories, like the lines that call them to mind, are all handmade. Sleeves rolled up, fingers furrowed deep into the burning earth to remind us where our roots are planted should we stray too far.

(Thanks so much again for gifting me this advance copy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt!)

If you liked my review, feel free to follow me @parisperusing on Instagram.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems will stick with you like dirt under your nails. Edgar Kunz walks around in his memories so vividly and plainly. The poems are about growing up in a working class family. Mental health. Rural communities and what is left behind when one leaves them. Many of the poems are not flowery — yet they create a reaction by describing images and places and people through plain language that almost reads like a journal or essay. The title poem, “tap out” is probably my favorite. Give it a try if you are looking for an accessible collection of poetry that has some emotional weight.

[Brennan Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

do I understand
poetry? no, but can I write

poetry? also no, I cannot.
but, do I have a father?

yes, and am I from New England,
yes, and Kunz writes

about father-son
relationships in New England

in terse, hard-hitting
language that stinks

of authenticity. regret
and love and something close to tenderness

is what you'll find
beneath the heartbreak kunz presents.

yeah dude I dunno, wtf is a poem? I simply do not have the language to speak about this kinda shit but it all worked for me! check it out, support poets!

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gritty, raw, with masculine tenderness (as oxymoronic as that seems). Edgar Kunz uses language as both weapon and salve. Together, these poems grapple in the truest sense with memory, family, confession, and toxic patriarchy. Together, they tell a heartbreaking, tender story of complicity and humility. Love, love.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got hold of an ARC and read it this afternoon. It's full of longing, and frustration, and pain (the poem for which the book is named is especially precise in its language about pain), but for all that or perhaps because of it, this book is exquisite. Really beautiful, and I think it's going to be very popular. It doesn't fetishize poverty or desperation or alcoholism, but it treats those subjects with love and precise, lived-it understanding. Wow. wow and wow and go read it as soon as you can.

[Troy Shirley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Idk how to really rate poetry, but methinks this was good.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's so rare to admire every single poem in a collection, but there wasn't a weak link in this wonderful debut. Kunz crafts highly lyrical narratives, rooted in lived experience (presumably; always a risk to conflate the speaker and the writer, but these feel like they sprouted up from his life), with tenderness and precision. I'm sure the word "grit" and "gritty" dot many reviews for this book; I get why. The speaker has grit--doesn't allow a difficult childhood to be the one sad note this book, the life it suggests sings. The setting, the conflicts the speaker experiences and witnesses--yes, gritty. But the grit is paired with gratitude, with a deep empathy for difficult parents, for lost souls, for the self and its limits as much as its expanse. Read this book.

[Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm almost sorry I'm finished reading this book, but I'm sure I'll read it again. This is one of the finest collections of poetry I've ever read. It is dark and real and laden with emotion, some on the surface, some buried deep. Some poems I could relate to--and by relate, it felt like the poet was talking about my own relationship with my father--and others just moved me. The poems come from a place I haven't been, but they take me there. I expect to hear more of Edgar Kunz. [I got this book when I heard him read at Powells in Portland, Oregon, and when the first poem he read nearly made me cry I was sold.]

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tap Out: Poems by Edgar Kunz is a collection of poetry that reflects the America many do not want to see but seems to be growing. Kunz's work has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow.

Kunz brings the growing blue-collar hardships to poetry. What Springsteen did with The Ghost of Tom Joad and much of his early work and what Stephen Markley did with his prose work Ohio now has a verse companion. Simple writing with explicit messages taken from what could be life in many places like Cleveland, Detroit, and the host of many broken manufacturing towns. Growing up, one does not see the poverty;  it is accepted as normal. Growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s I could relate to much of the normalcy of the life of the characters -- the older kids, drugs, the sense of adventure, and somehow thinking this was the best life. It is later that we see the decay in society, people, and the city itself. The toll is reflected in several examples. An alcoholic father who destroyed his family, and also the father who works harder than he should have to:

There's no one left to see his hands
lifting from the engine bay, dark, and gnarled
as roots dripping river mud

no one to see how his palms -- slabs of calluses

The poet sees the damage of drinking slipping into his life in an almost predestined fashion. As the world closes in on working people there can be bits of hope and even small victories.  Kunz captures an entire class of America in their darkest hour.  His writing seems biographical and without a forced hand.  The writing flows as if speaking from experience.  There is no hyperbole, only honesty of the people and their situation -- it may not be pretty, or even legal, but it is an adaptation to the environment.  There is a chance for some to escape and for some just to endure.  A hard-hitting, authentic, straight forward portrayal of the people who helped build America and now find themselves the working poor. 

[Up North Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

When teaching poetry, I often notice students’ interest in writing long, winding narrative poems. I teach a variety of forms, but ultimately allow them creative freedom when composing their own poem. Inevitably, the majority choose a form of their own invention, a lengthy narrative structure where they breathlessly describe a breakup, a childhood memory, or a trauma of some kind. They want to tell their stories, and they seem to find solace in this malleable structure.

I read these poems with interest. After all, it is a common experience to have memories that won’t stay put in a single neat, delineated description, experiences that seep into the rest of our lives, coloring every experience and changing our perspectives.

Edgar Kunz, in his recent poetry collection, Tap Out, has a similar eagerness for telling his story, letting the narrative seep slowly from one poem to the next, repeating characters, events, and images. The strength of this method is that it allows Kunz to emphasize the memories which provide a sort of structure to his life. For example, a childhood friend, Daryl, shoots himself, and this memory reverberates throughout the entire collection. Sometimes Daryl is simply, “Mikes brother Daryl,” other times he is a loudmouthed kid trying to impress girls, bragging about girls. But this memory, “The way your brother Daryl took himself out of the world,” is the vital cord to these other memories of this character.

There are some weaknesses in this collection. Poems like “Dry Season,” patch past experiences with the narrator’s current travels and the pastoral elk watching in Colorado. The poem is trying to tell us a story, but it is lost in the patchwork of its own images.

Kunz’s overall vision of these poems, however, sing with clarity. They emphasize the tragedy belonging to place, to one’s origins, of regional experiences that ring out beyond their seemingly humble roots.

Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books and NetGalley for the advance copy of this title.

[BookChampions · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Tap Out* by Edgar Kunz had me thinking of one of my favourite films, the daring and mystifying @onebigsoul film *The Tree of Life*. The poems, like the film, stitch together languid yet divine memories of an often distant father and the bond between brothers. The tender retellings and carefully constructed stanzas contrast with the rigid, rough expectations of masculinity, especially when burdened with poverty, alcoholism, and a fascination with firearms. The mood: aching, regretful, full of love.

My favourite poems were "Tap Out," "Brothers," "Window Washers* and "Close." Here's a taste of the latter:

*Yes, I have already begun the life-
long work of hating him, a job
that will carve me down to almost
nothing. I have already begun to catalog
every way he has failed me. Yes.
And here he is. Home early from a day shift
in Fall River. Teaching me what I need
to know. Pulling me roughly toward him,
the last half-hour of sunlight blazing
in his face, saying *This is how close
you can get.*

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of poetry may have brought me back to reading poetry books again. I loved this book. I was drawn to this book by the cover. Those hands. They tell a story that I wanted to read.

These are not your typical poems, they are more prose than not. They are mini-stories. We find recurring characters. This book is masculine. He deals with his Father, Brother, his friends, and we know the person speaking is a man.

This is blue collar working class. This is gritty. This is getting out and moving on and wondering, did you do the right thing?

I loved this book.


Thanks to the Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advance copy prior to publication.

[Patrick King · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Once, hungover on a gut-and-remodel job in Grafton, you cracked the root of your nose with your claw hammer’s backswing.

You stood very still after, watching your blood scatter on the plywood floor, alien and bright as coins from a distant country.”

Visceral and gross and beautiful—like Kunz’s other book I was floored by this, found myself flipping back pages over and over to reread these poems. They’re plain spoken and direct, but they’re full of bristling life and that mysterious strangeness that hangs in the air between people. I resonated with a lot of these, saw echoes of my own experience, the basements and dirt patches I frequented growing up. Disregard the MMA-ass title, this book is something much more.

[Robert Walicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edgar Kuntz's "Tap Out" came out of an unexpected recommendation and I can say that it has been for me, one of the most affecting collections in recent memory. These are emotionally present poems of frank honesty, told in an accessible narrative style, and yet their intimacy,restraint, craft, and fluid language are palpable in poem after poem. This is one of those books that holds together so incredibly well in way that feels completely organic and authentic. It's blue collar aesthetic is admittedly a voice I gravitate towards, touching on themes of the fallout over addiction, grief and the struggles many of us have of growing up working class. This is a book I return to and will return to for some time. Very highly recommended.

[wulvz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not amazed.

Tap Out by Edgar Kunz was engaging for contemporary poetry but not very thought provoking. It felt as though he was trying to make profound revelations about toxic masculinity and how violence can carry through generations, but all of them being the most blatant transparent and easy to digest takes of toxic masculinity and generational violence that one could ingest.

His use of language equally felt uninspired, we are talking about life altering things, why do I have to sit with the whimsy of how you perceive nature before getting back to the heart of your stories, I often times feel like with bc contemporary poets you have to fight the pages to get back to the emotions.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry as abrupt and jarring as broken bone.  Unless you can appreciate lives lived at the hard, ugly edges and find the brutal beauty in humanity that shows up drunk and loud, spitting and stealing, then stay away.  But here’s the thing.  This is humanity that won’t tap out, no matter what.  Hitting bookstores on March 5!

Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / Mariner Books via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

[C. Brunson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me to about page 18 to warm to the poet's style. But, once I did, I really enjoyed the pieces. Each reads like a snapshot of a pivotal event in the rough life of a coming-of-age man living in America. They were touching, honest and really relatable. Excellent visual details that pulled me into the pictures! Would give 4.5 stars if I could. Just a little more raw flash, a little more gutteral punch and this collection would have gotten 5 stars from me.

[dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accomplished and entirely relatable collection that slowly reveals its personality and rustic recurring motifs. Tap Out reads especially dynamic if the reader carries their own complex relationship with their father (what, me? Never!).

I particularly enjoyed Graduation (22), Blue (27) and Vows (50), and hotly anticipate whatever Kunz does next. At present, I feel I will return to this collection periodically.

[amanda abel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous collection full of moments of ordinary life and its requisite tragedies, contemplations over what impressions hardship and familial strife leave behind, the sum, the cost, and what is lost within a life lived without being cared for in the way we all need and deserve. Edgar does something that my favorite poets do, which is to write in a deceptively conversational way, which makes the beauty and his gut-punch endings all the more revelatory.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection focuses on the daily trials of a working class, blue-collar family in America.

His storytelling was well done and his descriptions were very detailed. However, all of the poems seemed to wander off without any definitive point or end. Which, perhaps was the poet’s intention, but it left me wanting more from this collection.

[Gina Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was very good at conjuring specific shades of sadness, regret and longing, and it felt really cohesive. I enjoyed it, but for me it was missing some meat- it just didn't hit me at my core the way I always hope poetry will. Still worth reading!

I received an advanced digital copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kunz's strong narrative style keeps you reading, but it's his endings that make you stop to appreciate them. He seems to have perfected the cadence of the Platonic final couplet, so much so that even the poems that I didn't particularly like still made pause on those final lines. It's so consistent that it almost starts to feel like a gimmick, but when it works it works.

[Christine Sopko · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors picture and story were different from the dirty hands and poetry inside perception...which is why I enjoy the glimpse of internal conversations vs outword apperances. It is a quick read with stories concrete in simplicity and arranged in enjoyable poetry from which you emerge reflective but not scarred.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tap Out reads like arm wrestling in a factory. Like sharpening a blade in a dive bar. Eating a cigarette on the roof of a church. This is a brass-knuckled collection of addiction and loss and brotherhood and masculinity, reminiscent of Wells Tower and Nick Flynn and Denis Johnson. It reads like sculpting a sand castle out of gun powder.

[chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

you grit
your teeth against the pain, sharp kneecap
bearing down on your chest, elbow torqued
past its limit, and you swear you could but out
of yourself and look down at your body, helpless
and small and trembling, press your mouth
to your own ear and whisper Not you. Not you.
-- "Tap Out"

[Katie Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of my favorite recent poetry collections, that reads almost as connected narrative vignettes with just the perfect words chosen. Kunz writes with a softness through a hard life that is also raw and intimate and powerful. This is one I will be widely recommending this year!