How did you become a writer? I began writing independently of schoolwork when I was nine, scribbling rhymed poems in pencil on the cardboard that came with my father’s laundered shirts. (“Yertle the Turtle” by Dr. Seuss was a strong influence). Concurrently, I wrote essays on the structures and functions of the human body. By the end of that year, I had drafted enough material for a child’s illustrated manuscript on human anatomy and physiology. This of course was never published, but it did anticipate my future career as a physician.
In my sophomore year of high school, my English teacher had his students maintain a poetry notebook for half the year. My notebook was a repository for poems by favorite authors, personal reactions to those poems, photos and illustrations cut from magazines and pasted onto the journal pages, and my own abysmal attempts to write verse.
My interest in poetry intensified in college where, as a biology major on the pre-medical track, I took four rigorous poetry courses. All four were lit courses; none involved creative writing. During the last of these, in an act of love masquerading as mania, I stopped attending classes, isolated myself from friends, ate and slept reluctantly, and spent five consecutive weeks writing a metaphysical poem on the theme of subjective vs.objective reality. I remember breaking down in tears and sobbing uncontrollably when the last few lines came together — a combination of exhaustion, relief, and the beauty I perceived in those final lines.
After graduating from Amherst College, I trained for ten years to become a physician, ophthalmologist, and neuro-ophthalmologist. In 1987, I was recruited to Duke University as Chief of Neuro-Ophthalmology and ended up serving on the full-time faculty for seventeen years. Some physicians are able to write poetry throughout their medical careers. I didn’t belong to that group. For me, maintaining a consultative practice in neuro-ophthalmology, training residents and fellows, publishing papers in peer-reviewed medical journals, and carrying out a variety of administrative responsibilities was all-consuming. While the instinct to write poetry was suppressed during this period, it was not extinguished. As I cut back on academic responsibilities during my last year at Duke, that instinct began to slowly reassert itself. Nearly all of the poems in my mature oeuvre were written between 2003 and 2023.
Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). These five books have had the greatest influence on my philosophy and on my writing: Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, How Does a Poem Mean? by John Ciardi, Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, and A Little Book on Form by Robert Hass.
One might reasonably assume that my influences would also include certain poets and their books of poems. However, upon reflection, I realize that only a limited number of poems comprise my list of “favorites,” and I suspect that it’s those works that have embedded themselves in my subconscious and, in the aggregate, constitute an eclectic influence on my writing. With apologies for the length, here’s a relatively complete list: The Weed and The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop; The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats; Design, Stopping by Woods, and A Patch of Old Snow by Robert Frost; Hope is the Thing with Feathers, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, and I Felt A Funeral in My Brain by Emily Dickinson; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens; The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot; Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces by Seamus Heaney; The Force That Drives the Flower, Through the Green Fuse, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, and Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas; Nick and the Candlestick, The Moon and the Yew Tree, The Applicant, and Cut by Sylvia Plath; Song by Muriel Rukeyser; Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy; The Flea by John Donne; To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell; Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish; Wish by Caitlin Doyle; Sonnet Nabokov by Daniel Bosch.
When and where do you write? I have always been undisciplined with respect to writing poems, as evidenced by the fact that I have no set writing schedule. In contrast to most other poets, I lack the ability to sit down daily at my desk and call forth ideas and/or personal experiences to serve as the basis for new poems. Nor have I ever relied on writing prompts to prime my poetry pump. Instead, I wait for lightning to strike in the form of: a) a vague idea that bubbles up into consciousness; b) a dream; or c) an observation of some natural phenomenon that seems to be a metaphor waiting to happen. The unpredictability of this approach means that I never know when the next poem will materialize.
Once I begin writing, however, I become intensely focused. I often begin as I did in childhood, with pencil and paper. After sketching out a preliminary concept or drafting a few auspicious words or phrases or stanzas, I transition to composing in Word on a laptop.
The key for me is to occupy a mental space where words, sounds, rhythms, conceits, and metaphorical possibilities freely and continuously enter the mind, while at the same time applying critical filters to eliminate the 99.9% of options that lack usefulness or merit. Those filters are internal, personal and idiosyncratic. They don’t relate to prevailing trends in poetry, to contemporary poets, or to the work of most historical poets.
When fully engaged and maximally productive, my efforts typically result in four new lines of poetry per day (derived from perhaps a dozen pages of notes and drafts).
What are you working on now? Promoting my new collection Exits! Once these marketing and publicity activities are behind me, I look forward to resuming the writing life.
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Given that so-called “writer’s block” describes my natural state, I allow it to persist until it no longer does.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? The best writing advice I ever received was when I was drafting my long poem at Amherst. Every few days, I would drag myself up three flights of stairs in Johnson Chapel to the office of David Sofield, a poet and professor of poetry. He would patiently listen to what I had written in the interim, make gentle suggestions, and provide encouragement to continue writing. That poem, which represented my first serious attempt to write poetry, would never have come into being without Professor Sofield’s support.
What’s your advice to new writers? Write poems that represent your unique aesthetic sensibilities. Try not to be overly influenced by prevailing trends or by contemporary poetic styles.
Edit mercilessly over an extended period. Satisfying first drafts often begin to show their flaws only after sufficient time has elapsed to afford an objective assessment.
Begin your foray into publication by submitting poems to literary journals. This will help you determine which of your poems resonate with experienced reviewers. Before each submission, make sure that your poem is a good fit for the journal.
When you publish your debut collection, be prepared for an abrupt shift from writing mode into marketing and promotion mode.
Stephen C. Pollock is a former associate professor at Duke University. His poems have appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, including “Blue Unicorn,” “The Road Not Taken,” “Live Canon Anthology,” “Pinesong,” “Coffin Bell,” and “Buddhist Poetry Review.” "Exits" (Windtree Press, June 2023) is his first book.
