“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 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? Blue-Collar Masculinity: From wrestling matches that leave weeping wounds to the silent codes passed down between working hands, these poems map the raw and often troubling terrain of manhood. - Narrative Poetry: Each poem tells a story—of salvaging wrecked cars, of a house fire's aftermath, of a graduation attended by a drunken father—with the plainspoken clarity of a lyric essay. - Class Mobility: A visceral look at the guilt and identity crises that come with leaving home, grappling with the shame of having "piano hands" in a world of calloused knuckles. - Bildungsroman in Verse: Follow a young man's journey out of a New England town of dead-end jobs and family trauma, and witness the cost of choosing a different life. Winner of the 2019 Nautilus Book Gold Award for Poetry "[A] gritty, insightful debut." - Washington Post “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” “This powerful collection reads like an elegy and a confession, like a slap to the face followed by a plaintive kiss, like watching bad things happen and knowing that you’re complicit. Yet cutting through every one of these essential poems is a gritty, naturalistic beauty that makes me want to read them again and again. Tap Out is a gem, and Edgar Kunz is a major talent.”  - Andre Dubus III, author of Gone So Long and Townie “These poems have a pervasive physicality that is both rewarding and horrifying…Arresting imagery, unexpected detail, brilliant use of tensions, a flowing rhythm and overall accessibility make this a collection to be read and re-read. Tap Out superbly mines the beauty, brutality, tensions and contradictions of working-class U.S. communities.” - Shelf Awareness “ 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 “Edgar Kunz extends the legacy of James Wright and Philip Levine in these gutsy, tough-minded, working-class poems of memory and initiation.  Tap Out is a marvelous debut, a well-made and harrowing book.”  - Edward Hirsch, author of Gabriel and A Poet’s Glossary "There is no ground of existence that does not require...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 "Kunz’s deb