A poetic journey through five decades of wonder, memory, and love, where the ordinary becomes sacred and every line leads home

Spanning five decades of poetic mastery, The Lost Book of Life: New and Selected Poems is the definitive collection from Charles Ghigna, a beloved and influential voice in contemporary Southern poetry. Drawing from fourteen previous volumes and featuring thirty-seven new poems, this landmark collection captures the full arc of Ghigna’s creative evolution, from his early meditations on nature and family to his later reflections on memory, mortality, and the enduring power of love.

With graceful shifts between free verse and traditional forms, Ghigna’s voice is both intimate and expansive—clear as spring water, alive with wit, and steeped in feeling. His poems open doorways into childhood’s bright dreaming, the quiet complexities of fatherhood, and the sacred hush of daily life. Ghigna invites readers to see the world anew, to find beauty in the familiar, and to embrace the sacred in the ordinary. For longtime admirers and new readers alike, The Lost Book of Life is a luminous testament to a life devoted to poetry. It is both compass and keepsake: a celebration of poetry’s enduring light, and a lasting gift to the literature of the American South.

Charles Ghigna is author of more than 5000 poems and one hundred books for children and adults. His books have been published by Disney, Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster and others. His poems have been published in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Saturday Evening Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Foreword by Jennifer Horne 

I. New Poems

The Lost Book of Life; No More Words;Tomorrow the Children;The Golden Girl Who Never Gave Her Wings Away; Womb; Chess Life; Bird Nests; The Raven’s Cry; The River of Time; Sacred Hours; Night Writer; Awakenings; Window Pains; The Dark Sweet Silence; Must We Always Pretend; Native Sun; You Don’t Have To; We Are One; One; Swimming My Way Back Home; Midnight Swim; Boys in a Dory; Beyond the Door; The Forest Is a Poem; Journey of Hope; When I Talk to My Father; May You Be My Love; This Is the One; The Cauling; In Your Hands; Answered Prayer; Julie’s Song; Seize the Moon; Flowers Like Us; Come Tuesday Even If It Snows; Last Word; and Waiting for the Night.

II. From Returning to Earth (1989)

Divers; A Fighter Learns of Hands; The Tryout; Coach; The Bass Fisherman; Hunting the Cotaco Creek; Keeping a Gun in the House; The Unsuccessful Farmer; The Alabama Elm; The Alabama Wiregrassers; and When Howard Flew into His Resurrection.

III. From Wings of Fire (1992)

Solace; Parting Shadows; Wings of Fire; Second Eve; Confession; Vespers; After Mass; Silent Vows; At the Sign of the Cross; Acolytes; Evening Reverie; Sotto Voce; Act of Contrition; Equal Rites; and Deliver Us Not.

IV. From Speaking in Tongues (1994)

Alabama; Best Man; The Bowman’s Hand; The Woman in the Bleachers; The Untold Truth About Hank; Nocturnal Roll Call; Painted Windows; Keeping Things Holy; The Adoration of Eve; Poem As Priest; and White Sheets.

V. From Plastic Soup: Dream Poems (1999)

Bull Rider; No Hunting Signs; A Martian Hides in the Supermarket; Pitcher Perfect; Making Love to the Statue of Liberty; Xenophobia; The Angel Dream; Brave New Whirl; Peace Talks; Cupid’s Revenge; Over Herd; Oak; and Dragon Death.

VI. From Love Poems (1999)

Morning; The Perfect Love Poem; It Would Be Easy; Royal Love; Present Light; The Answer of Love; A Gift of Flowers; Counting the Stars; Your Eyes; Your Song; I Used to Know My Name; Dreaming Awake; Give Me Ten More Years; and The Order of Words.

VII. From Haiku: The Travelers of Eternity (2001)

October; November; December; January; February; March; April; May; June; July; August; and September.

VIII. From A Fury of Motion (2003)

Baseball Dreams; Air Force; April Sideshow; Autumn’s Way; Snowfall in the City; The Leopard of Loneliness; Tell Me; Trip; Inspiration; and Art.

IX. From Stones: The Collected Short Poems of Charles Ghigna (2019)

I; Lion; Ant Farm; Picket Fence; Homerun Voyeur; The Ballet of a Boxing Fan; Riding Home from the Funeral; Attic Haiku; Poem Hunter; The Good Poem; Honest Lies; Lazy Susan; The Hunch; Détente; Eve; and There’s a U-Haul in the Driveway.

X. From Dear Poet: Notes to a Young Writer (2019)

Do Not Tell; Hang a Picture; A Simple Truth; When in Need of the Poem; Do Not Write; No Matter How Many Poems; Run Yell Spit at the Dark; Style Is Not How You Write; Trust Your Instincts; Inspiration Is Lightning; Look in the Mirror; A Silent Rhyme; The Path; Poems Are Not Penned; Don’t Plant Your Poems; A Poet’s Life; A Poem Is the Echo; A Poem Is a Rising Moon; A Poem Is a Spider Web; A Poem Is a Firefly; A Poem Is a Play; A Poem Is a Whisper; It’s Not the Poem; and The Answer to the Poet.

XI. From Illusions: Poetry & Art for the Young at Heart (2019)

Life’s An Illusion; Optical Allusion; Indigo; Hands That See; Ars Longa, Vita Brevis; and Be Still in the World.

XII. From Artwords: Artists & Poets, Portraits in Verse (2021)

Claude Monet; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Mary Cassatt; Vincent Van Gogh: A Villanelle; Pablo Picasso; Georgia O’Keeffe; Robert Hayden; Ezra Pound; Sylvia Plath; Anne Sexton; Emily Dickinson; Robert Frost; Carl Sandburg; and Walt Whitman.

XIII. From The Truth About Trees (2021)

The Truth About Trees; Treescape; Ever Green; Suddenly September; The Cold Gray Days of Winter; A River of Stars; Think Like a River; Obeying Stones; Trees of Fire; Respect the Fire; The Shape of Life; On Edge; The Edge of the Universe; and Night Trees.

XIV. From The Father Goose Treasury (2023)

Quiet Days; Bird Nest; Air Ships; Moon; Orion’s Way; Stormy; After the Storm; Autumn; November; The Wild Geese; Winter Calls; Winter is a Poet; Sunrise; The Thunder; Roses After the Rain; Summertime; Racing the Wind; Country Roads; and A Poem Is a Little Path.

XV. From Southern Bred: A Memoir (2025)

Southern Bred; 1952; Jimmy’s Dad; Paper Planes; The Basement; Fish; Riding to School; In the Shadow of the Raven; Buck Dancing; Hunting Boys; When Howard Became Jesus; Shop Class; Guilt Lifts Me Up; Falling Down Another Birthday Dream; Pitching Horseshoes; Riding Trains; The Bridge; Samuel; and Cleaning Out the Closet.