Dien Cai Dau

By Yusef Komunyakaa,

Book cover of Dien Cai Dau

Book description

Poetry that precisely conjures images of the war in Vietnam by an award-winning author.

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Why read it?

1 author picked Dien Cai Dau as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

“I think of language as our first music,” notes the celebrated poet Yusef Komunyakaa. His collection of Vietnam poems, Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for crazy) fuses images, sounds, and sights from Vietnam into a fearful, lyrical symmetry. Born James Brown in rural Bogalusa, Louisiana, he served in Vietnam as a correspondent and editor of The Southern Cross, the newspaper of the Army’s 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). “The Vietnamese knew what was happening in the American psyche when it came to race,” claims Komunyakaa, “and sometimes they expertly played on it.” The poem “Hanoi Hannah” in Dien Cai Dau…

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