Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie was published by Random House in 1971 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. It is Angelou’s first collection, divided into two sections: “Where Love Is a Scream of Anguish” (poems of romantic love, desire, and loss) and “Just Before the World Ends” (poems of racial anger, political protest, and Black identity).
Angelou’s poetic voice is immediately distinctive: rooted in the oral tradition of Black speech and song, rhythmically assured, emotionally direct, and accessible without being simplistic. The love poems draw on blues and gospel traditions — they are poems meant to be spoken aloud, their effects achieved through rhythm, repetition, and the music of Black English. The political poems are angrier — they name racial injustice directly, without the metaphorical displacement that white critics preferred.
The collection established Angelou’s position as a popular poet in the best sense: a poet whose work reaches beyond the academic poetry audience to readers who do not ordinarily read poetry. This populism was sometimes held against her by critics who valued difficulty and obscurity, but Angelou understood that accessibility is not the same as superficiality — that a poem can be immediately comprehensible and still be genuinely complex in its emotional and political implications.
Collecting Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie
First edition (Random House, New York, 1971): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
- Very good: $75–$200
- Signed: $400–$800
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation. Her first poetry collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is this collection significant? Published in 1971, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie was Angelou’s first poetry collection and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The book is divided into two sections: love poems and poems about racial injustice. First editions are desirable because they represent the beginning of Angelou’s career as a published poet, which would culminate in her reading at the 1993 presidential inauguration.