Music composed by Adam Silverman (2023) to poems by John Stone.
Performed by Constellation Mens Ensemble.

PROGRAM NOTE

John Stone (1936-2008) was a poet, essayist, and cardiologist who lived his adult life in Atlanta, Georgia, serving at the Emory University School of Medicine alongside my father, Mark Silverman. Dr. Stone and my dad joined the Emory faculty the same year and died within days of each other. They were good friends and had much in common, including a distinctive old-world charm and a patient-centered perspective that they brought to medical practice. And while my father wrote an endless stream of clinical articles and book chapters, I think he envied Dr. Stone’s ability to perfectly turn a phrase, and the specific way he viewed the heart in its “literal and metaphorical” senses.

So many of Dr. Stone’s poems address the memory of his father, whose heart attack at age 45 must have guided the son’s journey into cardiology. Of course, I find it impossible when reading these poems not to reflect on the loss of my own. I consider this choral work to be a tribute to these two men and composing it has offered a chance to feel as if I am spending time with both, now fifteen years gone. For this, I am grateful.

- Adam Silverman
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All poems are used by permission from Louisiana State University Press and were originally published in the following collections:

"Spiritual" was originally published in "Music from Apartment 8: New and Selected Poems" (2004). "Talking to the Family"and "Autopsy in the Form of an Elegy" were originally published in "The Smell of Matches" (1972). "Losing a Voice in Summer" and "The Girl in the Hall" were originally published in "In All This Rain" (1980). "You Round the Bend" and "Seeing Double After Eye Surgery" were originally published in Renaming the Streets (1985).

You Round The Bend

Adam B. Silverman