Tessa Kale

Tessa Kale is the author of the prize-winning chapbook The Hudson Line and has had poems published in The Yale Review, The Western Humanities Review, Prelude, and many other publications. Crow’s Cup received the Red Mountain Discovery PrizeA graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, she works as an editor on The Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry. She lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, with her husband.

Crow’s Cup

Winner of the Red Mountain Discovery Award

Here, a ‘map of circumstance / unfolds’ to the vividness of the crows that move through these poems, a quick brilliance of utterance that surprises with precision and candor the way a blue sky can, or the dazzle of winter sun. Clara Schumann, beloved husband, Hudson River, a new prehistory. Read Tessa Kale to be reminded that living language can quench even the most persistent thirst.” —Honor Moore

Tessa Kale stands out brilliantly among living poets for versatility, originality, intelligence, and wit.   She is a friend of the natural world—its flora, fauna, bodies of water, weather, idioms; every one of her phrases reveals some fact of perception, emotion, or memory.  Reading her poems is for me a renewal as well as pure fun.  A reader can hardly ask for more. — William Harmon