"The stunning fifth book from McCrae (The Gilded Auction Block) is steeped in the truths of witness and imagination . . . 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 . . . This newest collection continues McCrae’s powerful examination into race, forgiveness, and meaning in America, making it an essential contribution to contemporary poetry." —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"In McCrae’s hands, poetry is reclamation. It is also transport: writing a way out and through." —Kate Kellaway, The Guardian

"Racial injustice, economic inequality, simple human cruelty — McCrae addresses all of these subjects, these facts of the world, head-on — while, like Dante, transposing the literal into the otherworldly . . . McCrae’s capacity for praise may be his most remarkable poetic ability. Rather than yield to the pain, suffering, and injustice that make up much of its world, Sometimes I Never Suffered strains toward a vision of joy." —Will Brewbaker, Los Angeles Review of Books