Exits by Stephen C. Pollock
First Prize for Poetry, 2024 North Street Book Prize
"Stephen C. Pollock's elegant poetry collection Exits is held together by supple formal inventiveness and a thematic focus on mortality. This universally humbling subject inspires not only melancholy but moments of humor and awe at our small place in the natural world." —Jendi Reiter, final judge of the North Street Book Prize. Read the complete critique and learn more about Exits.
Please enjoy this excerpt:
Arachnidæa: Line Drawings
V.
A concert in the round!
Divertimenti scored for eight short hands
will be played by the maestro
for adoring fans.The fine fretwork glistens.
The strings tune and go still.Once in motion,
you dazzle in the parts for pizzicato,
leap with ease over fourths and fifths,
scuttle up scales to a dizzying height
then plummet, by octaves, to the sublime.
All are amused, for a time.The circle is crossed by chords,
point to counterpoint,
illusions of balance, of words.Listen to the last mournful strains
murmuring a requiem for the days.
For commentary on this and other passages in Exits, please go here.
