2 Yusef Komunyakaa first editions are documented on this shelf, from Dien Cai Dau (1988) to Neon Vernacular (1993) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Yusef Komunyakaa title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Yusef Komunyakaa copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Dien Cai Dau — 1988 · Wesleyan University PressWesleyan Poetry Series. Issued in cloth and in wrappers. Wrappers issue: ISBN 0819511641 (ISBN-13 9780819511645). The clothbound hardcover carries ISBN 0819521639 (9780819521637) and is the scarcer form. The Vietnam War collection; the title is GI-era slang rendered 'crazy.'. US Wesleyan true first. The cloth issue is scarcer and generally preferred; the softcover is a simultaneous true-first issue. Signed copies exist. Later printings add a printing statement; no book-club edition.
Neon Vernacular — 1993 · Wesleyan University PressWon the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. The true first is the Wesleyan University Press / University Press of New England 1993 edition (Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems), identified as first edition, first printing. The hardcover issue was published without a dust jacket; a simultaneous paperback was also issued. US Wesleyan true first. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994 (also the Kingsley Tufts Award). Samples from Copacetic, I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, and Dien Cai Dau. Post-award reprints may bear an award notice; the softcover is a true-first issue but secondary to the scarcer cloth.

More Poetry, Beat & Drama shelves: A. E. Housman, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Carson, Anne Sexton.

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