Speaking in Tongues: New and Selected Poems [Hardcover]

Charles Ghigna (Author), Ross Zirkle (Illustrator)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 134 pages
• Publisher: Livingston Press (AL) (January 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942979192
• ISBN-13: 978-0942979190
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,047,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Ghigna (FATHER GOOSE) is the author of more than 50 award-winning books from Random House, Disney, Hyperion, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Abrams and other publishers. His books have been featured on ABC's "Good Morning America," PBS and NPR. He is a poet, children's author, speaker, and nationally syndicated feature writer who promotes the love of poetry and children's literature throughout the world and the author of more than 5000 poems for children and adults. His poems have appeared in hundreds of textbooks, anthologies, magazines from The New Yorker and Harper's to Cricket and Highlights. His poems also appear in the national SAT and ACT tests. He has served as poetry editor of The English Journal for the National Council of Teachers of English and has presented poetry programs at the Library of Congress, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the American Library in Paris, the International Schools of South America and at hundreds of other schools, colleges, conferences, libraries, book fairs, and literary events throughout the world.

For more information, please visit the Father Goose web site at www.FatherGoose.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars X.J. KENNEDY, March 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Speaking in Tongues: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)

"Charles Ghigna writes with appealing freshness, placing his words exactly and concisely, with a mean eye for a metaphor. He takes aim often at difficult and elusive targets, and he hits far more than his quota. His best poems -- and many are particularly fine -- read like short, hard chisel-jabs into a sheet of granite." --X.J. Kennedy, 1994

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well crafted; broad range, July 9, 2001

By 

Mark Dawson (Washington, District of Columbia United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Speaking in Tongues: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this book. It is divided into sections that reveal a broad range of style and subject. Readers who delight in word play will particulary enjoy the poems on the circus and on authors. My favorite section is the one on Howard, an ambitious series of poems on an enigmatic schoolmate named Howard. "When Howard Became Jesus" will send a tingle down your spine. Sometimes to be pitied, Howard's actions nonetheless provoke self-reflection in the narrator and other persons who know him regarding struggles common to all of us. There are other fine poems as well, in both free verse and forms. I can't help but think that if more contemporary poets could combine memorable language and subjects the way these poems do, poetry would have a bigger audience in the U.S. I was formerly a teacher, and in addition to reading these poems for your own pleasure, I recommend this as a book to share with your students to help awaken them to the possibilities of language and to writing their own poems. Buy the hardcover if you can get it -- you will want to pull this book from the shelf often and reread it.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PAUL RIFFIN, March 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Speaking in Tongues: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)

"A masterful collection of poetic strength and clairty of vision; poems dealing with a broad range of subjects from a fighter learning of hands, to a mystical man named Howard trying to find himself in a world all but beyond his grasp." --Paul Ruffin, 1994