Attentive to echo and resonance, this debut collection ranges across and makes connections among natural, musical, and literary histories.
The title for Katherine Gibbel's debut collection plays with the etymology of the sonnet, or sonnetto in Italian: a little song or little sound. Exploring the possibility of words and the limits inherent in both language and form, Little Sound asks its reader, "Did you hear that?" and tunes in to what echoes when we listen.
Divided into three long poems, Little Sound explores language, gossip, reading practices, love, and death, tracing webs of meaning across a range of seemingly disparate topics. Gibbel's speaker interrogates partial histories and turns them into meditations on the literary, the natural, and the personal, including the subdivided memorial prairies of the Midwest, family history, pipe organs, and medieval theology. Associative, funny, curious, bell-like, and elaborately architectural, Gibbel's poems offer a study in emotional nuance, knowing winks, and sonic attentiveness.
| ISBN: | 9780226852416 |
| Publication date: | 6th October 2026 |
| Author: | Katherine Gibbel |
| Publisher: | The University of Chicago Press an imprint of University of Chicago Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 88 pages |
| Series: | Phoenix Poets |
| Genres: |
Poetry |
Attentive to echo and resonance, this debut collection ranges across and makes connections among natural, musical, and literary histories.
The title for Katherine Gibbel's debut collection plays with the etymology of the sonnet, or sonnetto in Italian: a little song or little sound. Exploring the possibility of words and the limits inherent in both language and form, Little Sound asks its reader, "Did you hear that?" and tunes in to what echoes when we listen.
Divided into three long poems, Little Sound explores language, gossip, reading practices, love, and death, tracing webs of meaning across a range of seemingly disparate topics. Gibbel's speaker interrogates partial histories and turns them into meditations on the literary, the natural, and the personal, including the subdivided memorial prairies of the Midwest, family history, pipe organs, and medieval theology. Associative, funny, curious, bell-like, and elaborately architectural, Gibbel's poems offer a study in emotional nuance, knowing winks, and sonic attentiveness.
Little Sound features in the following genres: Poetry
Little Sound is available in Paperback
Little Sound was written by Katherine Gibbel and published by The University of Chicago Press an imprint of University of Chicago Press
Little Sound has 88 pages
Yes it is part of Phoenix Poets series
£13.50