Annal:1991 Yale Younger Poets Prize

Bears Dancing in the Northern Air

Christiane Jacox Kyle

• 1991 Younger Poets winner
• Score: 10.41

“What matters to me in these poems is the dramatic and startling way our daily lives belong to this world, the way moments, days, years carry some reminder of a larger universe. In the Old Testament, pride and despair are the twin poles of illusion marking when the people have lost their way-pride when they see themselves larger than life, despair when too insignificant, a thing apart. Both are mitigated in the wilderness, where their voice listens and is heard on earth and in the heavens.”