Connections

As if she is polishing silver, poet Irene Sipos' phrases shine slowly for us like her meditations. She works her way through family histories and mysteries that have led to our present technological life. In Sipos' poems, she asks intelligent questions and leaves us to find our own answers. She draws us into a complex life, making it appear simpler, and thus encourages us to confront our own situations. Waiting at the bus stop with Sipos, we observe- half awake, half dreamlike. We connect our past and present worlds with the help of her metaphoric and musical, then shiny and precise, poetic verse. - Perry S. Nicholas, Poet/Professor Emeritus SUNY at Erie

Irene Sipos, Professor Emeritus of English, walks in the beauty of poetic tradition of Wordsworth, Byron, Keats. She is masterful in her poetic execution. She calls to the Romantic poets for help - "Try to find the words, they suggest/Sighing, I kick at blazing heaps of leaves/ But it's not possible, I respond, you are whizzes/and I'm an amateur stuck in the 21 st century." The root of amateur is amare - to love. Ms Sipos is rooted in her love of language and verse. She loves the poetic traditions of nature, love, individual emotional experience. "Poems grow wild, abundant, sensuous as peonies. ..." Connections is a collection of gems, personal moments; (over morning coffee, meeting a newborn grandchild through glass, humming children setting the table), all touch our universal hearts. Each poem, a polished piece, gleams with love and familiarity.

- Trudy Stern, Writer, Illustrator, Publisher, Retired Nurse Practitioner

The connections in this fine book of poems by Buffalo poet Irene Sipos pull us in with stories both personal and universal. What better time than now to celebrate the importance and depth of family while simultaneously keeping the remembrance of history? Her brilliant poem "Lady Bird Lake" highlights connections through deep observation where "a lake...is a river," "the girl/who is a boy the boy who/ is a girl "and "the river whose destiny reaches the sea" until all, somehow, become one. There is so much offered in these poems that we can't help but be reminded of our own connections - to ourselves, to each other, and to the world.

-Katherine Hastings, Author of four full-length collections of poetry; Poet Laureate Emerita of Sonoma County, CA