Edgar Kunz

Work samples

"Piano" in The New Yorker

This is a poem from the title sequence of my latest book, Fixer. The sequence explores the aftermath of my father's death from addiction, including going back home to clean out his apartment and reconnect with my brothers. Each poem in the sequence is a kind of long sonnet of eighteen lines. The language is clean and spare and the poems move with the cadence of everyday speech. Often in these poems, other people are speaking. This speaker is my mom.
"Night Heron" recording for Brooklyn Poets

This is one of the final poems in Fixer, and it's one of the first poems I wrote after finishing my first book, Tap Out. I wanted to switch up my style, try to be freer and write with less control, less of an idea about where I was heading. I wanted the poem to be tonally various—funny and desperate and deadly serious and grateful.

I recorded this reading for Brooklyn Poets, a NYC-based poetry nonprofit. It's the poem the whole book is building toward, and it contains within it, both tonally and thematically, all of the concerns of the collection. It is also a love poem.

Here's a link to the text of the poem:

https://brooklynpoets.org/community/poet/edgar-kunz
The Slowdown w/ U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith: Episode 23

Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith introducing and reading my poem "My Father at 49, Working the Night Shift at B&R Diesel" for her podcast The Slowdown. She makes a connection between my poem and the work of the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney, especially the way that both of our poems engage with work and labor. The poem appears in my first book, Tap Out.

Here's a link to the text of the poem:

https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2018/12/26/23-my-father-at-49-working-the-night-shift-at-br-diesel
Edgar Kunz reads "Salvage"

This video is me reading my poem "Salvage" for a project called Ours Poetica, a collaboration between John Green (author of The Fault in our Stars, etc.) and The Poetry Foundation. It's a poem that starts as a litany of jobs I've held and the ways in which I carry those jobs in me. It moves to the landscapes I carry, then narrows to a particular memory of cutting coupons with my mom on our kitchen floor. It's a poem about strange gratitude, the gratitude of knowing, at least, what exactly you will be allowed.

About Edgar

Edgar Kunz is the author of two poetry collections: Fixer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023), a New York Times Editors' Choice Book, and Tap Out (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019), which the Washington Post called "a gritty, insightful debut."

… more

View Edgar's Resume

Fixer

I have a new poetry collection called Fixer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023), a shape-shifty book that starts as an examination of work and labor in late-capitalist America: the gig economy, squatters, conspiracy theories, the impending robot rebellion. Then it turns to the eponymous long poem, a series of "long sonnets" that deal with the aftermath of my father’s death in poems that are both devastating and darkly funny, and center on the relationship between three brothers. The book resolves into a series of complex love poems that point to possible hopeful futures.

Poems from the book appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Oxford American, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and Yale Review. The book received a full-page review in the New York Times-- they call the book "Haunting" and say "Reading Fixer, you can’t help thinking of Raymond Carver and the way that his blue-collar, stripped-to-the-bone style served as a corrective in the 1980s." It was also positively reviewed in the Washington Post ("An arresting vision buoyed by Kunz's wry wit"), Booklist ("Stunningly beautiful...Unsparing yet buoyant"), and Publishers Weekly ("Stunning and lyrical...Kunz has written a beautiful book"). It was also named a Best Poetry Collection of 2023 by Electric Literature.

Poems from the book are featured below, plus a PDF of the entire book.

Fixer (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2023) Cover
"Piano" in The New Yorker

"Piano" in the New Yorker
"from 'Fixer'" in Poetry Magazine

"from 'Fixer'" in Poetry Magazine
Therapy (1 of 2), first published in The New Yorker
Therapy (2 of 2), first published in The New Yorker
Night Heron (1 of 4), first published in American Poetry Review
Night Heron (2 of 4), first published in American Poetry Review
Night Heron (3 of 4), first published in American Poetry Review
Night Heron (4 of 4), first published in American Poetry Review
Fixer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023) Full Text

Tap Out

Here's my first book, Tap Out, published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2019. The New York Times named it a "New & Noteworthy" book and The Washington Post said it was "a gritty and insightful debut." It's a collection of poems about growing up in working poor New England. It's also about escape, inheritance, California, bitcoin, various dumb jobs, and the anxieties of class mobility. The writing of the book was supported by fellowships from Stanford University and the NEA, and it won a few awards including the Julia Ward Howe Prize.

Individual poems were published in places like Ploughshares, New England Review, Sewanee Review, AGNI, and Gulf Coast, and reprinted in places like Best New Poets 2015 (ed. U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith), Best New Poets 2017 (ed. Natalie Diaz), NEA Writers' Corner, Poetry Daily, and The Millions. The book has also been translated into Italian and published by Fuorolinea (Rome, IT). And they translated an essay I wrote for LitHub and published it as an afterword.

Poems from the book are featured below, plus a PDF of the entire book.

Tap Out (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019) Cover
After the Hurricane
Brothers
My Father at 49, Working the Night Shift at B&R Diesel
Interim (1/3)
Interim (2/3)
Interim (3/3)
Salvage
Tap Out (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019) Full Text

Uncollected Essays

I've started to write essays loosely about the craft of writing poems. I'm averaging one essay per book of poetry I write, so I'm not exactly setting any records! I am proud of them though-- they're a stretch for me artistically and they're a good representation of my thinking. The first, called "Hand Over Hand", is about poetry's relationship to lying. The second, called "Unspendable Currency", is about how late-capitalist hustle culture intersects with making poems, and how the internalized tenets of industrial capitalism are a danger to the art. You can read both as PDFs below.

Unspendable Currency

"Unspendable Currency" by Edgar Kunz
Hand Over Hand

"Hand Over Hand" by Edgar Kunz

Reviews + Press

Here's a selection of reviews and press Fixer and Tap Out have received from publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and others.

"What Work Is" -- New York Times review of FIXER
FIXER named a New York Times Editors' Choice book
Electric Literature names FIXER a Best Poetry Collection of 2023
Publishers Weekly review of FIXER
Booklist review of FIXER
TAP OUT named New York Times New & Noteworthy book
The Washington Post features TAP OUT
Publishers Weekly starred review of TAP OUT
On The Seawall reviews TAP OUT

Interviews

Here's a selection of interviews I've given for print and online publications like Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and Los Angeles Review of Books, and for podcasts with Literary Hub and The Library of Congress.

Interview alongside Megan Fernandes for Los Angeles Review of Books
Podcast interview for Literary Hub
Interview about FIXER for The Rumpus
Ten Questions Feature with Poets & Writers
Podcast interview for The Library of Congress with Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri
Interview about finishing TAP OUT and starting FIXER with Harpur Palate
Interview about TAP OUT with Adroit Journal
Interview about TAP OUT with Sewanee Review

Tour Posters

I've given over a hundred readings/talks/book signings in the U.S. and Europe, from Baltimore to San Francisco to Reykjavik to Paris. Here are posters -- most made by me, a few made by the press -- to get the word out about some of these events.