Stones is a book of poems of everyday experience, sometimes illuminated by a flash of sunlight or darkened by a passing cloud. Some are laments for a broken world or meditations on how we could do better. All are invitations to observe and praise. "These are the beautifully welcoming and soul sheltering poems of a life fully experienced, full of the rich details of a present vividly illuminated and a past hauntingly remembered." -Patricia Tansey Poet and Editor of A Celebration of Western New York Poets "If stanza means "room," then there is perhaps no better form for Irene Sipos's intimacies than these rooms of her own making, these lines of verse that hold--that host--family and friends. The poem in her practice is a hospitable act, inviting to the table as equals the newborn and the departed, welcoming memories of one, and hopes for the other." -Andrew Rippeon Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature Hamilton College "Even when she laments the decay of values, Irene Sipos creates these love poems to "the preposterous phenomenon of life." As she honors family and friends, she asks them (and us): "Forty years ago, dear marchers, what did we know?" and "How far have we travelled, /all of us, from home?" From childhood to now and from the blizzard of 1977 to the election of 2016, she answers those questions-tentatively-by "Unfolding the small story, the quiet narrative, ... a tiny window that slowly opens to reveal." We are absorbed by her intimate revelations so that we, too, may love a life, as she quotes Paul Simon, "slip slidin' away." -David Landrey, Poet, Professor Emeritus, SUNY Buffalo State