Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio Features Stephen C. Pollock

Stephen C. Pollock is the author of the poetry collection Exits, published by Windtree Press. The book nods to the literary traditions of years past while simultaneously speaking to the present moment. It responds to contemporary anxieties surrounding death and the universal search for meaning in life’s transience. Influenced by Dr. Seuss, Pollock began writing rhymed poems at age nine. In high school, he maintained a poetry journal as part of his sophomore English curriculum, and at Amherst College, he took four rigorous poetry courses. During his final semester at Amherst, in an act of love masquerading as mania, he stopped attending classes, isolated himself from friends, ate and slept reluctantly, and spent five straight weeks writing a metaphysical poem on the theme of subjective vs. objective reality. His professional career was a play in two acts. Trained as a physician, Pollock was recruited to Duke University as Chief of Neuro-Ophthalmology in 1987. His clinical practice consisted of evaluating and caring for patients with complex ocular manifestations of neurological diseases. He also trained ophthalmology residents and fellows, and he published a number of clinical and research papers in the medical literature. Prior to leaving academic medicine, he achieved a rank of Associate Professor with tenure.

After seventeen years, Pollock left Duke to become chief executive of CEC (cecvision.com), a nationwide company that provides vision benefits to individuals and their family members. He retired after the company was sold in 2019. Pollock has occasionally dabbled in engineering and technology as well. He wrote U.S. Patent 4,477,158, Lens System for Variable Refraction, and he also designed an instrument that’s used to biopsy inaccessible tumors of the orbit and brain. For more information, please visit, https://exitspoetry.net/