Christiane Jacox Kyle's Bears Dancing in the Northern Air, the winning volume in the 1990 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, was selected from among 725 entries in this annual competition. "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."