Michael True Memorial Poetry Reading

Julia Forest

Copy Editor

For Edgar Kunz, poetry is more than just an occupation or creative outlet. “Poems can be places where we get to spend time with people that we can’t access in our real lives. Sometimes, I think that all these poems that I wrote about my dad were just a way of making a version of him that I could spend time with, and that I could understand a little better, and that I could love a little better than the real person,” Kunz said.

On February 19th, Assumption University held its annual Michael True Memorial Poetry Reading in Curtis Performance Hall. Edgar Kunz, an author whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and more, discussed and read poetry from his two books, Fixer and Tap Out.

David Thoreen, a Professor of English at Assumption, opened the event by speaking on Michael True’s legacy. “He taught American Literature and then after he’d invented it, Peace Studies, so that he could provoke conversations about poetry, peace, and social justice. Mike was a prolific writer, authoring 12 books, numerous essays, reviews, and poems that appeared both in scholarly journals and magazines for the general reader. Mike True was a scholar, an activist, and a teacher,” Thoreen said.

“Mike and his wife, Mary Pat, were married for 61 years and they spent 54 of those

years in their house on Westland Street, here in Worcester, raising their family and

hosting a steady stream of poets, writers, and activists, many of whom read and spoke

here at Assumption… In 2015, Mike became the first person to be awarded the Kunitz Medal by the Worcester County Poetry Association, an association he had co-founded in 1971, and that association is today, stronger than ever,” he continued.

Wendy Jacobi, who’s part of the class of 2027, introduced Edgar Kunz by recognizing the importance of his work. “In this world, in Kunz’s poetry, everything is tactile and the persistence of love finds itself wedged within it. Love reaches him and us in its complex, confounding, yet honest form. The idea of persistence levers Kunz’s poetry…Kunz persists through the death of a father, through lost love, through raised rent, and we love him all the more for it. He is human, and as we read, we begin to learn that so are we,” Jacobi said.

Kunz read a selection of poems from Fixer, which was published in 2023, and from his first book, Tap Out, which is from 2019. He also shared a new political poem of his, titled “Lawn Care.” This new poem is about how the institution where he teaches threatened student’s who protested.

“I tried for a long time to write a poem about it, but it never felt right. It just felt like me pointing at a thing…pointing means that everyone’s looking at the thing they’re pointing at, and they’re not looking at you, right? This is a way of making my stance safe, because I’m saying look over there, and I’m getting you all to agree that the thing over there is bad. That’s not nearly as interesting or real or true as me pointing in both directions and saying look at that thing over there and also look how I’m bound up in that thing, look how I’m implicated by that thing, look at the ways in which I am enacting that thing over there. by my action or inaction. That’s the territory of poetry. That’s what poems should strive to do…get to a place that’s more complex and refuse to look away,” Kunz said.

Kunz reflected on how his teacher, Louise Glück, impacted his work. “…she changed the way I think about poetry really profoundly. And one thing that she would always say to us is that ‘to insist is to deaden.’ The poems, in Fixer especially, are sort of experiments with trying to say just barely enough for the poem to arrive somewhere that’s satisfying for the reader. Not over saying.”

According to Kunz, all poetry is influenced by other poets. “No poems get written without reading other poets. And from other generations and from other countries also. A problem with young poets today is, I mean my students included, they want to read only contemporary stuff. Only stuff that’s written by people that are their age and speaking exactly their language. I think it’s a huge loss, we have to read stuff in translation. Now seems important because it’s now and we’re all living through it, but every now seemed important,” he said.

Whether it’s through the writing process or reading the works of other’s, engaging in poetry can be a learning experience. “I’ve been changed by reading other people’s poems…the practice of writing poems, the practice of paying close attention, of trying to get something right in language, going back to it and being dissatisfied and saying like I think there’s something more here, I think there’s something I’m not seeing, that practice has by degrees changed me as a person,” Kunz said.

Kunz emphasized the point that poetry shouldn’t be made to please others and that writers should not worry about how others will react to their poetry. “I have been surprised by how well people have received my poems and I don’t think it’s because I’m flattering to them. I think it’s because of that fundamental stance of generosity and also that willingness to implicate myself. I’m not letting myself off the hook either. If I’m giving you a hard time. I’m also going to give me a hard time,” he said.

Kunz concluded the event by highlighting how poetry can be both demanding and fulfilling. “I think the lesson that I keep having to learn and relearn over and over again is that the joy is in the process. The joy is in making something happen on a blank page with  little black marks on paper, that’s magic. That will sustain you, if you protect your relationship with that page. That will sustain you for a lifetime…it’s all about coming back with bravery and openness and faith. Faith that if you approach that page with the right attitude and the right mindset, something will happen, something unexpected.”