Katherine Gibbel & Alyssa Moore - Little Sound, Come Again
Featured Book
Little Sound
"Katherine Gibbel's Little Sound is an associative, curious, and elaborately architectural debut collection of poems. Bookish without being fussy, Gibbel's poems trace webs of meaning among far-flung topics, repurposing partial histories, and offers meditative, wide-ranging sequences on topics as varied as medieval theology, family history, pipe organs, and subdivided memorial prairies of the Midwest. The book's title-quaint on its surface-speaks to the etymology of the sonnet: sonnetto in Italian, meaning a little song or little sound. Throughout the book, Gibbel lovingly borrows and breaks the sonnet structure. Through her use of predominantly short line lengths, Gibbel also relishes in an impeccable comedic timing, though these poems are far from slight or ephemeral. Little Sound is a study in emotional nuance, sonic attentiveness, and knowing winks, and Gibbel is the rare kind of poet who, writing of flowering trees, can craft an image as delicate as "a tight bud on the brink / of fame" only a few lines down from the self-deprecating admission that "spring made me a basic bitch.""-- Provided by publisher.
Also Featured
Come Again?
"Alyssa N. Moore's debut collection Come Again? conjures a series of otherworldly scenarios in which reinvention becomes a form of resistance--a method to elude the snares of a modern existence to which we contribute but can't control. The book's shapeshifting narrator adopts personae that include the Volunteer, the Eternal Counselor, the Streetcleaner, and the Architect, each with their own expressive voice and allegorical angle. Moore's facility with poetic form lends a welcome instability to the book. As the speaker cycles from one state of employment to another, each of these avatars guides the reader through a series of darkly comic set pieces that are by turns cinematic and slapstick. Somewhere between irony and sincerity, image and text, and feeling and concept, Come Again? defies deference to the customary and conventional and instead goes boldly into new worlds of its own remaking"-- Provided by publisher.
About This Event
Katherine Gibbel will read from her debut poetry collection, Little Sound, and Alyssa Moore will read from her debut poetry collection, Come Again.
Featured Authors
Gibbel, Katherine
Katherine Gibbel edits and prints the monthly letterpress poetry series Send Me Press. She lives in Vermont. Little Sound is her first book.
Moore, Alyssa N.
Alyssa N. Moore is the author of the chapbook WET MEDIA. She is an intermedia poet and an editor for Ghost Proposal, a journal for poetry and work outside traditional notions of genre. She was the inaugural winner of Poetry magazine’s Editors Prize for Visual Poetry.
About the Venue
Prairie Lights Books
Prairie Lights sprang to life in May 1978 as a small, intimate bookstore offering titles by the newer voices of Raymond Carver and Alice Munro and by established authors like Eudora Welty and George Orwell. As the staff and customers tended the books with care much like a garden, the store grew and blossomed. By 1982 Prairie Lights transplanted itself from South Linn St. to South Dubuque and has gradually spread to three and a half floors, the half being an 1100 square foot coffee house located in the same space that the local literary society met throughout the 1930's, hosting writers Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Sherwood Anderson, Langston Hughes, E.E Cummings and others. Gertrude Stein and friend Alice B. Toklas were scheduled for a reading but were sleeted in at Waukesha airport-- or so the story goes. Perhaps the strength of reputation lies in the reading series of local, national and international writers who have read their works which were broadcast live on stations WSUI and WOI and which was the only regular literary series of its kind. All of this could not have been possible without a loyal customer base and a dedicated staff. We thank our customers for their continued support, and welcome our new customers.
Visit store pageMore at Prairie Lights Books
Jamie Brooks - The Fleeing Season
In a special event organized by University of Iowa Press, author Jamie Brooks will read from her new memoir, The Fleeing Season: An American Mother's Migration Toward Safety and Justice. The Fleeing Season is the first book in the Locating Reproductive Justice Series, edited by Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz and Lina Murillo and published by University of Iowa Press, which explores reproductive justice within and beyond US borders to center global, transnational, regional, and local conversations on reproductive justice as theory and practice.
Julie Orringer in conv with Sam Chang - Luna, Phoenix, Queen
Julie Orringer will read from her new novel, Luna, Phoenix, Queen, which was named a Kirkus Prize Finalist, and she will be joined in conversation with Iowa Writers' Workshop Director, Lan Samantha Chang.