Daniel Hoffman’s poem, “A Stillness,” appeared in NER 1.2 (1978):
Each bead of the mist is burning
with the joy
of a resurrected soul.
A will within it,
draws it back from me a little—the cove,
a beach of shallow pools
behind the sandbars, and the bay
without motion
blending, somewhere
into the fog, the infinite empire
of floating fiery light.
Ann Beattie’s story, “Octascope,” appeared in NER 1.1 (1978):
We live in a house divided into five rooms, heated by a wood stove. When Carlos finished building his house, a friend gave him furniture: three beds, so there are three bedrooms and a living room and a bathroom. In one of the bedrooms is a refrigerator and a sink and a hotplate on top of cinder blocks.
Alfred Nicol’s poem, “The Inheritance,” appeared in NER 1.3 (1979):
We return to the ocean
because we have grown used to it.
It is a field of long grass
we do not cut and bale,
a field we’ve let go wild.
If there are great winds
we’ve stood up to the wind before.
Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Field Work,” appeared in NER 1.1 (1978):
Where the yellowhammer flared out of the bushes,
Where the perfect eye of the nesting blackbird watched,
Where one fern was always green.
I watched you through the mossed shins of the hedge
Take the pad from the gate-house at the crossing
And lean to pluck a white wash off the whins.