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.

Pollock began writing poems at age nine, scribbling rhymed verse on the cardboard that came with his father’s shirts. In high school, he maintained a poetry journal as part of his sophomore English curriculum. A more intense approach found expression during his final semester at Amherst College when, 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. Fourteen of his poems have since appeared in literary journals.

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 retiring from 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. Although technically, he retired from CEC in 2017, he spent the next two years as point person for the sale of the company.

Pollock has occasionally dabbled in engineering and technology as well. As a third-year medical student, he collaborated with another student in the development of a unique variable-focus lens consisting of the spherical interface between two immiscible liquids. Pollock ended up writing the patent. In 1984, the Patent Office granted U.S. Patent 4,477,158, Lens System for Variable Refraction. Pollock also designed an instrument that’s used to biopsy inaccessible tumors of the orbit and brain.

For additional information, visit exitspoetry.net