The winning volume in the 1985 Yales Series of Younger Poets competition is George Bradley's Terms to Be Met. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: George Bradley belongs to a tradition of philosophical poets that includes Lucretius and Wallace Stevens. His lines are long, unfreighted, the easier to lift us to high and distant places, and to teach us to listen for 'the sound of the sun.'

Richard Kenney's The Evolution of the Flightless Bird, the winning volume in the 1983 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, was selected from among 650 entries in this annual competition. All of one species whose origin is the sonnet, Kenney's poems ring many changes through that form, reflecting, as they do, a personal evolution in the poet's life. "The Hours of the Day"--the first of four chapters--is a long meditative sequence set in Vermont; here the square-shaped poems become the crown glass windowpanes of the farmhouse itself. "First Poems" follows next, a group of eight...

The winning volume in the 1988 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Out of the Woods by Thomas Bolt. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: -Here is an up-to-date pastoral: wrecked cars, glades of debris, polluted streams, all gravely held in Thomas Bolt's unflinching gaze. 'I had found, ' he writes, 'the secret center of America.' Given this wealth of evidence, its bleakness and sparkle, we can almost bring ourselves to believe him.- A Hill in Virginia In this rude worldMemory pertainsIn bald things, Of promises skipped over, violenceOr...

The winning volume in the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is To the Place of Trumpets. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poems suggest a kind of folk art-their clay washed of narrative grit, serviceably turned and fancifully decorated, fired, then filled at the creative instinct's oldest well. It is a pleasure to drink form this fine local pottery.