John Stone

A local history guide in old photographs and postcards of Malton, Yorkshire over the last 100 years

Poet and cardiologist John Stone is a man of many voices. A gifted verse maker, he exhibits in his writing the qualities of a compassionate physician, a musician, linguist, naturalist, and down-to-earth yet whimsical grandfather, son, husband, and brother. Selections from four previous books together with twenty-two new works compose this exquisite volume, a ""best of the best"" sampling from a beloved poet.

In The Tank Debate, John Stone highlights the equivocal position that armour has traditionally occupied in Anglo-American thought, and explains why - despite frequent predictions to the contrary - the tank has remained an important instrument of war. This book provides a timely and provocative study of the tank's developmental history, against the changing background of Anglo-American military thought.

Where Water Begins, which arrives thirteen years after his last collection of new poems, resumes John Stone's literary quest to express his fascination with life's mysteries and miracles. Much has happened in the interim, as this collection of writing intimates. While Stone's artistic gaze combines the perspectives of poet, physician, teacher, husband, and father, his world has changed, reorienting and deepening his vision. The title of the book suggests both a journey and an enigma: water as source, water as life- whether it flows as a rivulet near Stone's cabin in the north Georgia mountains or circulates within the human body. To quote W. H. Auden (as the book's title poem does): ""Thousands have lived without love, but none without water.""To read Where Water Begins is to follow life's eddies and flows- along the streets of Oxford, England, or through an Atlanta neighborhood (""Talking with the Mockingbird""); to experience not only ""the bitter physics of the world"" (the loss of a spouse in ""Seeing in the Dark"") but also the healing that comes with the tincture of time (""Abid-ing""); to rediscover the triumphs and solace of humor (the terror of piano lessons in ""Preludes""); to turn the corner of a day and find joy in a soap bubble floating down through busy traffic; to recognize one's limitations (""He Attends Exercise Class- Once""); to encounter the incongruities of travel, like the third-floor Chicago hotel room with a sliding patio door but ""my God- no patio outside!"" (""The Good-bye, Good Morning, Hello Poem""); to experience and reexperience a spectacular ice storm (""Ice""); and to welcome and bless the voice of an infant grandchild.Stone's poem to his granddaughter, ""Singing from the West Coast,"" concludes,None of the banquetsof this worldwould dare start without you.Where Water Begins is a book of many musics from a man attentive to the plenty, the mystery, and the passing of life's banquets.

The management of quality has emerged as the key development issue for education in the 1990s and beyond. In the context of education, quality is an ellusive concept and difficult to define. This text offers practical ideas and suggestions from which the reader can choose to meet their own particular needs in a field where there are seemingly an infinite number of possible approaches.

A gifted poet as well as a renowned cardiologist and medical professor, John Stone eloquently bridges the seeming expanse between science and the arts. In this wonderful collection of true stories, Stone fluently translates the language of cardiology into one we can all understand as he examines the relationship between the physical heart, the driving pump that nourishes the body, and the metaphorical heart. Through fascinating case histories, Stone reveals the human side of medicine, uncovering, the world of emotions felt by doctors and by those who seek their help.

Stone is not only a valuable physician, but a poet who is able to get his outstanding qualities of imagination and formal technique into a relationship that produces poems of great human value. - James DickeyRenaming the Streets, John Stone's third book of poems, is a work that speaks to the future but remains mindful of the endless intersection of the past and present. Stone writes about the human experience in all its seasons: if there is suffering, pain, loneliness, there is also love, mercy, humor, and, always, a sense of wonder. In ""Rosemary,"" Stone describes the vulnerability of a traveler who falls half in love with a coffee-shop waitress. When, in ""The Bass,"" a city clicker takes his son fishing and they unexpectedly catch a fish, there is not only high humor, but at the end, a sudden contemplative tone:That fish won for us a trophy which I keep here on my desk to remind me of that morning and ofhow unexpected the end may b ehow hungry how shiningRenaming the Steets is notable for its explorations within form: prose vignettes and a sonnet sequence are side by side. In the latter, the astonishing feats of the homing pigeon take on metaphorical depth:Its house as handsome as a Henry Moore a prisoner in the rounded sleep of egg . . . But then the chipping chisel of its beak, a burglar on the perfect inside job, and with a novice's display of cheek what began as instinct ends as squab.Renaming the Streets is a book of cycles and circuits. The work is all of a piece, the voice that of a mature and meticulous craftsman, a distinguished presence in American poetry.