NEIL FISCHER was born in 1963 and began writing poetry with some resolve five years ago, while traveling alone across the country. In 1992 he received an M.A. from New York University, through which he volunteered at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island; in NYU's creative writing program there, he transcribed patients' works and assisted in workshops. He is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and is at work on his first manuscript, which includes poems about an American family in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.