This issue also features Alice Notley and Ted Berrigan, who, by this point, were already a generation older than most of the poets in the New York School. In fact, Berrigan passed away only six years after the publication of the fourth issue, and this growing sense of mortality is reflected in the poems he wrote. Lines such as "...'you will never go / any place for the second time again.' / It's hard to fight, when your body is not with you. / & it's equally hard not to" from “Work Postures” suggest a physical frailty (pg. 49). "The Execution Position" is a similar reflection on mortality, wondering at once, "'It is easier to die than to remember.'...", and ending with Berrigan going in "the execution position" (pg. 50). Sappol has described that, in his groups, there was a rejection of poetry that was too flowery, too "pretentiously high-flown philosophical", or too confessional, and as a result, the poems published in Personal Injury tend to be more jokey and provocative. This kind of poem is a departure from that aesthetic, but as a sort of “mentor” to this third generation of New York School poets, Berrigan was widely respected and admired. Of course, there are also lines from other poems that carry profundity and gravity, but they are otherwise filled with a sort of humor or brevity. The lines appear just as quickly as they are shrugged off, always trying to stay afloat and prevent things from getting too dark.