- Keyword = African American Poetry
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THE NEAR-JOHANNESBURG BOY and Other Poems.
Edition: First thus (originally published by David Press in 1986 )
Chicago: Third World Press, (1991). First edition - A collection of fourteen poems by the first African American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize. A slim chapbook. 32 pp. Cover painting by Anna Tyler. ISBN: 0-88378-0550.
Condition: Near fine in stapled illustrated wrappers (a bit of rubbing to the covers)
Book ID: 87956More details Price: $21.50 -
WINNIE.
Edition: First thus- a slim trade paperback.
Chicago: Third World Press, (1991). First edition - A long poem written in honor of Winnie Mandela, wife of Nelson Mandela. Originally published in 1988 by her own imprint. 23 pp. Cover painting by Anna Tyler. ISBN: 0-88378050X.
Condition: Fine in stapled illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 87974More details Price: $20.00 -
SERMON ON A PERFECT SPRING DAY
Edition: First printing.
Minneapolis: New Rivers Press, 1998. First edition - Highly praised collection of poetry by this African American writer. A title in the Minnesota Voices series. ISBN: 0-89823-185x.
Condition: As new in stiff illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 22239More details Price: $18.00 -
BEAUTIFUL SIGNOR.
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback..
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, (1997). SIGNED first edition - Award-winning African American poet's third collection, inspired by Dante and Venice (Cassell spent 8 years living in Italy). Martin Espada these love poems "resonant, even haunting, born of an acute sensual awareness." SIGNED on the title page. 120 pp. ISBN: 1-556591241.
Condition: Fine in glossy illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 72407More details Price: $25.00 -
SOUL MAKE A PATH THROUGH SHOUTING.
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback..
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, (1994). SIGNED first edition - Award-winning African American poet's second collection, one which is enriched by his world travels from Afghanistan to the Pyrenees. Rita Dove called it "the most spectacular book I've read in years" SIGNED on the title page. 75 pp. ISBN: 1-556590652.
Condition: Fine in glossy illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 72637More details Price: $30.00 -
MAD DOG BLACK LADY.
Edition: Limited, signed first edition.
Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1979. SIGNED hardcover first edition - African American poet's first regularly published collection. #129 out of 200 copies numbered and signed by Coleman. 133 pp plus colophon and final photograph of author. ISBN: 0-876854129.
Condition: Fine in illustrated boards with burgundy cloth spine, paper title label on spine, in original acetate wrapper.
Book ID: 88745More details Price: $500.00 -
THE BALLAD OF THE BROWN GIRL: An Old Ballad Retold.
Edition: First printing.
Condition: Very near fine, with many leaves still unopened; the uncommon glassine dust jacket has significant chipping and wear.
Book ID: 88298More details Price: $75.00 -
AWAKENING AND OTHER POEMS.
Edition: Limited first edition.
Condition: Fine.
Book ID: 76759More details Price: $65.00 -
CAPTIVITY.
Edition: 3rd printing, a trade paperback.
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, (1993). Third collection of poems by this award winning writer (including the 2020 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry and the 2021 Wallace Stevens Award). Cover praise from Sharon Olds, who commented that these poems "show us our underlife, tender and dreadful. And they are vibrant poems, poems in the voice of the living creature, the one who escapedand paused, and turned back, and saw, and cried out. This is one of the most beautiful and necessary voices in American poetry today. 69 pp. ISBN: 0-822954222.
Condition: Near fine in glossy illustrated wrappers (previous owner's name inside front cover, upper corner slightly bumped).
Book ID: 88018More details Price: $15.00 -
YOU DON'T KNOW ME: Poems.
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback original.
Toronto: TSAR Publications, (2005). First edition - His first collection of poetry - one which "examines image versus reality of tolerance and multiculturalism in Canada from the perspective of a young, gay, black man." 71 pp. ISBN: 1894770226.
Condition: Ex-library with the usual markings, but overall a tight and clean copy.
Book ID: 67500More details Price: $30.00 -
GRACE NOTES.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Norton, 1988. dj. Hardcover first edition - The fourth book of poems, her first after winning the Pulitzer Prize.
Condition: Ex-library with usual stamps, sign of pocket removal on front endpaper, but overall a tight clean copy in a near fine dustjacket.
Book ID: 12851More details Price: $15.00 -
THE DARKER FACE OF THE EARTH: A Verse Play in Fourteen Scenes.
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback original, issued simultaneously with a limited signed hardcover.
Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press, 1994. SIGNED first edition - A classical tragedy, in blank verse, based the story of Oedipus, but set on a plantation in antebellum South Carolina. INSCRIBED on the title page and dated in 1999. Illustrated by Mark Wooley. One of only 4,000 copies in wrappers out of a total edition of 4276. ISBN: 0-934257-744.
Condition: Very near fine in glossy illustrated wrappers, as issued.
Book ID: 15656More details Price: $40.00 -
SONATA MULATTICA: A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Norton, (2009) dj. Hardcover first edition - A lyric narrative by this former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, inspired by a footnote to musical history, a recreation of the life of a nineteenth-century virtuoso violinist, George Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860), the son of a white European woman and a black African prince, who in 1803 traveled from London to Vienna to meet Beethoven. Notes. 225 pp. ISBN: 9780393070088.
Condition: Fine in a fine dust jacket (as new.)
Book ID: 61839More details Price: $19.50 -
GRACE NOTES.
Edition: Trade paperback.
New York: Norton, (1991). Hardcover first edition - The fourth book of poems, her first after winning the Pulitzer Prize. 73 pp. ISBN: 0-393-306968.
Condition: Near fine.
Book ID: 59037More details Price: $12.50 -
ON THE BUS WITH ROSA PARKS: Poems.
Edition: 1st trade paperback printing.
New York: Norton, 1999. National Book Award nominee. ISBN: 0-393-32026x.
Condition: Ex-library with the usual markings, but overall tight and clean in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 31398More details Price: $8.50 -
SELECTED POEMS.
Edition: 1st trade paperback printing.
New York: Vintage Books, (1993.). First edition - First one-volume selection of work by the nation's first black Poet Laureate, introducing a new poem and essay, and including "The Yellow House on the Corner, Museum", and the Pulizter-Prize winning "Thomas and Beulah." Chronology, index of titles. 210 pp. ISBN: 0-679-750800.
Condition: Fine in glossy illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 59060More details Price: $12.00 -
RAPS
Edition: First printing.
Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1973. dj. Hardcover first edition - Collection of 29 poems by this African American reporter, editor and writer.
Condition: NF/VG (staple holes in front endpaper, some rubbing to black dj, closed tear with associated creasing on upper edge of dj.)
Book ID: 6524More details Price: $25.00 -
KNEES OF A NATURAL MAN: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, (1989) dj. Hardcover first edition - Edited and with a substantial introduction by Eugene B. Redmond. Before his death in 196, at just 33 (shot, in a case of "mistaken identity" by a transit cop in a New York subway station), Dumas had produced numerous poems and short stories, only partially published. His poetry has been called "eloquent, precise and controlled ... a poetry of powerful outrage." This volume includes both works from his earlier books and some never before published poems. Quite scarce now in the hardcover first edition. [26], 155 pp. ISBN: 0-938410-75x.
Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket (appears unread.)
Book ID: 84927More details Price: $450.00 -
WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON: Poetry.
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback original.
Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, (2006). SIGNED first edition - African American poet's first collection; the title sequence includes poems which give a glimpse of her family's history - her grandparents during the Depression, her parents in the segregated South. INSCRIBED on the title page "here's to many years of beautiful trips, new friends and great pleasures" and dated in Los Altos in the year of publication. Cover praise from Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton and others. 85 pp. ISBN: 1-59709000X.
Condition: Fine in glossy illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 69969More details Price: $25.00 -
THE GATHERING OF MY NAME: Poems
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback, issued simultaneously with hardcover.
Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991. First edition - Award-winning Black poet's fourth collection. A title in the Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series. 85 pp. ISBN: 0-887481167.
Condition: Fine in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 86215More details Price: $17.50 -
YOU DON'T MISS YOUR WATER: Poems
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback, issued simultaneously with hardcover.
New York: Henry Holt, (1995). First edition - The author's fifth collection, a slim book of 21 prose poems, in which he meditates on the dying of his cold and unloving father. 33 pp. ISBN: 0-805036687.
Condition: Fine in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 82511More details Price: $15.00 -
WHO WILL CRY FOR THE LITTLE BOY? Poems.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Morrow / Harper Collins, (2003) dj. First edition - His first collection of poetry and his second book (the first was the acclaimed memoir "Finding Fish." 61 pp. ISBN: 0-06-0549327.
Condition: Very near fine in a near fine dustjacket.
Book ID: 53081More details Price: $14.50 -
THOSE WHO RIDE THE NIGHT WINDS, POEMS
Edition: First printing.
New York: Morrow, 1983. dj. Hardcover first edition - The title of this collection refers to those who have tried to make changes, who have gone against the prevailing winds - from Phillis Wheatley, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King to John Lennon and Robert Kennedy, and also uncelebrated, unknown friends and lovers. ISBN: 0-688-019064.
Condition: Fine in near fine dust jacket.
Book ID: 29288More details Price: $28.00 -
THOSE WHO RIDE THE NIGHT WINDS, POEMS
Edition: Trade paperback.
New York: Morrow, 1983.
Condition: Near fine condition.
Book ID: 15657More details Price: $9.00 -
CHASING UTOPIA: A Hybrid.
Edition: Trade paperback.
New York: William H. Morrow, (2016). SIGNED - A collection of poems and short prose poems celebrating the ordinary joys of life. SIGNED on the half title page. 143 pp. ISBN: 978-0062562883.
Condition: Very good in illustrated wrappers (lower corner slightly bent).
Book ID: 82147More details Price: $17.50 -
BLUES FOR ALL THE CHANGES: New Poems.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Morrow, 1999. dj. Hardcover first edition -. ISBN: 0-688-156983.
Condition: Very near fine in a like dustjacket (a new copy, remainder line bottom edge.)
Book ID: 18137More details Price: $16.00 -
THOSE WHO RIDE THE NIGHT WINDS, POEMS
Edition: First printing in wrappers, issued simultaneously with hardcover.
New York: Morrow, 1983. First edition -
Condition: Near fine condition.
Book ID: 12689More details Price: $10.00 -
RE: CREATION.
Edition: Fourth printing, a trade paperback.
Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, (1973, c 1970). The third collection of poetry by this important African American writer - although she comments that "No one was much interested in a Black girl writing what was called 'militant' poetry" all three of her early books sold well - as evidenced by 4 printings of this title within 3 years. The poems in this collection are very personal, with many influenced by the Black Power movement of the 1960s and others written for and about Black women like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin. 48 pp. ISBN: 0-910296448.
Condition: Near fine in illustrated stapled wrappers (prev owner's name)
Book ID: 84257More details Price: $90.00 -
SISTER NO BLUES.
Edition: First printing, a trade paperback, issued simultaneously with hardcover.
Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books, (1998). First edition - Poems and prose poems, monologues and dialogues by this feminist writer - poems that detail the experiences of a black urban woman eking out a living as a waitress, cleaning person, office temp and more - drugs, racism, greed all play a part in these poems. 143 pp. ISBN: 0-932379494.
Condition: Very good in illustrated wrappers.
Book ID: 64831More details Price: $15.00 -
HOPSCOTCH LOVE: A Family Treasury of Love Poems.
Edition: First printing.
New York: Lothrup, Lee & Shepherd, (1999.) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A collection of twenty-two poems which celebrate the different faces of love - "There's something here for every age and every taste, from sweet to sassy to sentimental." SIGNED by the author on the title page and uncommon thus. Illustrated in full color by Melodye Benson Rosales. 89 pp. ISBN: 0-688156673.
Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket.
Book ID: 41008More details Price: $30.00