Sometimes I never suffered

Sometimes I never suffered

Shane McCrae, 1975-

Book - 2020

"In Sometimes I Never Suffered, his seventh collection of poems, Shane McCrae remains 'a shrewd composer of American stories' (Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker). Here, 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, as well as his own. Sometimes I Never Suffered is a search for purpose and atonement, freedom and forgiveness, imagining eternity not as an escape from the past or present, but as a reverberating record and as the culmination of time's manifold potential to mend."--Publisher's d...escription.

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Subjects
American poetry > 21st century.
Poetry.
Genres
Poetry
Published
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Shane McCrae, 1975- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
86 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780374602918
9780374240813
  • Preface
  • Jim Limber in Heaven Is a Nexus at Which the Many Heavens of the Multiverse Converge
  • 1. Fresh Eyes for a Fresh World
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel Falls at the Beginning of the World
  • The Wings of the Hastily Assembled Angel
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel Considers What It Means to Be Made in the Image Of
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel Also Sustains the World
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel on Care and Vitality
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel Considers His Own Foreknowing
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel Meets the God of Human Freedom
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel at the Gate
  • The Tree of Knowledge
  • The Loneliness of the Hastily Assembled Angel
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel Considers the Duties Owed to Love
  • The Hastily Assembled Angel Considers the Lives of Dogs and of People
  • 2. Variations on Jim Limber Goes to Heaven
  • Jim Limber Tells the Truth About His Fate
  • Jim Limbers Home Is No Earthly Home
  • Jim Limber Describes His Arrival in Heaven
  • Jim Limber Refuses to Enter Heaven Until He Has Lived a Happy Life
  • Jim Limber Enters the Joint Economy of Heaven and Earth
  • Jim Limber on the Inability of the Enslaved to See Themselves
  • Jim Limber's Theodicy
  • Jim Limber on the Ever-Growing Hunger for the New
  • Jim Limber Sees People Get the Heaven They Want
  • Jim Limber on the White Embrace
  • Old Times There
  • Limbo
  • Jim Limber Burning Where No Fire Is
  • 2. Variations on Jim Limber Goes to Heaven
  • Jim Limber on the Gates of Heaven
  • Jim Limber on the Peace Which Passeth All Understanding
  • Jesus and the Mongrel Dog
  • Jim Limber on the Heavenly Reward
  • Jim Limber in Heaven Writes His Name in Water
  • Heaven in Heaven
  • Jim Limber on the Gardens of the Face of God
  • Jim Limber on Continuity in Heaven
  • Jim Limber Tells What He Knows About Heaven
  • Jim Limber on Possibility
  • 1. Fresh Eyes for a Fresh World
  • The Ladder to Heaven
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The stunning fifth book from McCrae (The Gilded Auction Block) is steeped in the truths of witness and imagination. In poems that wrestle, doubt, and syntactically and rhythmically double-back on themselves, McCrae writes of such characters as the "Hastily Assembled Angel," who "was/ Not God and could be wrong." McCrae's angel ponders a line that reads "in the midst of life we are in death," while Jim Limber, a recurring character, states: "I can't die/ Enough for all the life I see." These poems see the white world as it chooses not to be seen, and illuminate the contradictions, disappointments, and loneliness that comes with paying true witness. As Limber wonders: "If I've earned my reward where is the life where I can spend it." In these pages, heaven is an "ordinary garden" that has been "set free," and each poem transcends with feeling, particularity, and honesty. This newest collection continues McCrae's powerful examination into race, forgiveness, and meaning in America, making it an essential contribution to contemporary poetry. (Aug.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

In this latest work from National Book Award finalist McCrae (In the Language of My Captor), a hastily assembled angel whose wings comprise blood, emptiness, and sun is shoved from Heaven by his fellow seraphs. Meanwhile, Jim Limber, the biracial adopted son of Jefferson Davis, resists ascending to Heaven until he's lived a happy life: "If I've earned my reward where is the life where I can spend it." Visiting Davis in Hell, Jim admits that he told the Yankees he was proud to be Davis's son (elsewhere observing bitterly, "they think/ They know how I was treated in the south 'cause/ They know how they would treat me if they could"), but he refuses to help the shameless Confederate president. Instead, he continues his epic meditations, bearing witness like the fallen angel to human cruelty and disingenuousness and defining Heaven as all that Black people have been denied: "What if in Heaven we could have white things// And not be white." VERDICT Original in conception and nearly biblical in tone; highly recommended.

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