Sometimes I Never Suffered

A profound exploration of race, history, and the afterlife from an acclaimed poet

In Sometimes I Never Suffered, his seventh collection of poems, Shane McCrae continues to be "a shrewd composer of American stories" (The New Yorker). An angel, hastily thrown together by his fellow residents of Heaven, plummets to Earth in his first moments of consciousness. Jim Limber, the adopted mixed-race son of Jefferson Davis, wanders through the afterlife, reckoning with the nuances of America''s racial history and his own identity.

McCrae''s verses span religious, historical, and political themes, searching for purpose and atonement, freedom and forgiveness. Sometimes I Never Suffered imagines eternity not as an escape from the past or present, but as a reverberating record and the culmination of time''s manifold potential to mend.

I think now more than half

Of life is death but I can''t die

Enough for all the life I see

A thought-provoking exploration of race, discrimination, and the complexities of the African American experience, this award-winning collection solidifies McCrae''s place among the most compelling voices in contemporary poetry.