Editor’s Note: This is the poem that happens when you’re a poor young writer subsisting paycheck to paycheck and someone gives you an outlet for your creativity. What poem would have arisen, I wonder, if he had worked at a waffle iron manufacturer? DL
Tester by Edgar Kunz
I catch a bus out to the county
and check in at a beige terminal
and they ask me about the smells
and textures of various dips
and I click appealing
or not appealing, then elaborate
in the text box below. Artichoke
and French Onion. Spicy Three
Bean Queso. I got in
on referral. I live with seven
other people. I measure rent
in how many sessions I have to do
with the dips. I start testing
what I can get away with: notes
of bright espresso, mouthfeel
of a sun-ripe plum.
I write longer and longer.
I don’t think they read a word.
It’s weeks before you’re entered
into the system, more weeks
to get your tiny check. Aline says
If you think it’s a scam
why do you keep saying yes?
In the fluorescent room I receive
one dip after another from blue
gloved hands, always the same
plain tortilla chips to dip with,
the same hands clearing away
the tiny plastic cups. I tinker
with my descriptions. If I need
water, they bring me water
in slightly larger cups.
Edgar Kunz has been an NEA Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Poetry, the American Poetry Review and the Oxford American. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College. His poem “Tester” is included in his second book, Fixer (Copyright© 2023 by Edgar Kunz). Posted here with author’s permission and courtesy of Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers.
I now wonder what defines poetry. Am I to assume it is determined by self appointed experts with credentials issued by institutions that wish to convince us that did not attend what we are missing? I do not consider this poetry by any standard that I understand. I detected no real message to remember. What emotion do this appeal to? I see no cleverness in the writing. Is this what is considered modern technique? Sorry I got nothing from this selection. I learned nothing, I felt nothing. I hope this is one of the author’s lesser works.
There’s a lot of humor in this poem–“I got in on referral,” those anonymous “blue-gloved hands,” the water being brought in slightly larger cups” as if there were some magnanimity at work in this sterile corporate setting. l also was amused by the way the poet used his writing skills in a situation where it was clearly not appreciated, but he couldn’t help doing it anyway. That is the nature of creativity it seems to me, that it will find expression no matter the environment. As for the style of the poem, that is a matter of personal taste and not every poem will appeal to everyone. Thanks for writing.