In the final year of the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina, adopted a Black boy named Jim Limber and brought him to live with them in Richmond. Who was he and what did he really mean to them?
Jim Limber – Encyclopedia Virginia encyclopediavirginia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from encyclopediavirginia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Image Journal. His most recent book is
Longing for an Absent God: Faith and Doubt in Great American Fiction.See All Articles
Sometimes I Never Suffered, the latest book by the poet Shane McCrae, enters a rich literary tradition of angels and still manages to offer a new, illuminating perspective. McCrae’s ambitious work arises from a Christian perspective, one that is not wracked with doubt but steeled in wonder. In an interview published last year by
The Millions, McCrae stated, “I find the mystery(ies) of God overpoweringly attractive when thinking about God, one inhabits a space in which one can think forever.”
Top 10: the TS Eliot Prize shortlist
Each year, the T S Eliot Prize offers poets a chance to win a huge sack of cash, and critics a chance to generalise about trends in poetry. So here goes: long fragmentary narratives are in, love poems are out (though Natalie Diaz unfashionably flies the flag for sensual abandon). Who’ll win the £25,000 prize? If I were judging, it’d be Sasha Dugdale or Shane McCrae. But I’m not, so I’d bet on Diaz, with a side-flutter on Bhanu Kapil.
I’m sore about the omission of Timothy Donnelly’s superb The Problem of the Many, and wouldn’t have minded a bit of light relief (Caroline Bird, say, or Matthew Welton) but otherwise this is a strong and unusually ambitious list. Like last year, and the year before, and the year before that, half the nominees are university dons, but this year the books