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Sea of Faith
"Fun, wisdom, tasty language. Sea of Faith has real subways in it as well as real rivers, mountains and dogs, scoops of heartbreak, sightings of beauty. Yes, sad or happy, the poems are alive. Sea of Faith was a complete pleasure for me to read." —Alicia Ostriker, author of The Crack in Everything
In a masterful blending of lyric and narrative, Sea of Faith ranges widely across interior states and external worlds. From the Sierra Nevadas to New York City subways, from an imagined friendship with Lao Tzu to a rueful meditation on Coney Island, from a comic and poignant classroom discussion of "Dover Beach" to a sexual fantasy spawned by a tedious poetry reading, John Brehm’s poems explore the human predicament with tenderness, compassion, and unforgettable humor.
"The poems in Sea of Faith present us with a vivid dramatic voice, one determined to engage with a world that often seems intangible and remote, and to resist a world that seems all too real and disappointing. The speaker here is both self-mocking and self-accepting, taking his concerns seriously but always distant enough from them to regard them as a small part of a larger human story, a story we recognize at once to be our own."—Carl Dennis, Brittingham Prize judge and author of Practical Gods
"John Brehm writes on a knife edge. His voice would be ironic if it weren’t for the sustained emotion, the opening to the unknown, the ‘electric calm.’ These elegant poems wear their eloquence lightly; the stakes are high. Sea of Faith is an unforgettable book."—D. Nurkse, author of The Fall
In a masterful blending of lyric and narrative, Sea of Faith ranges widely across interior states and external worlds. From the Sierra Nevadas to New York City subways, from an imagined friendship with Lao Tzu to a rueful meditation on Coney Island, from a comic and poignant classroom discussion of "Dover Beach" to a sexual fantasy spawned by a tedious poetry reading, John Brehm’s poems explore the human predicament with tenderness, compassion, and unforgettable humor.
"The poems in Sea of Faith present us with a vivid dramatic voice, one determined to engage with a world that often seems intangible and remote, and to resist a world that seems all too real and disappointing. The speaker here is both self-mocking and self-accepting, taking his concerns seriously but always distant enough from them to regard them as a small part of a larger human story, a story we recognize at once to be our own."—Carl Dennis, Brittingham Prize judge and author of Practical Gods
"John Brehm writes on a knife edge. His voice would be ironic if it weren’t for the sustained emotion, the opening to the unknown, the ‘electric calm.’ These elegant poems wear their eloquence lightly; the stakes are high. Sea of Faith is an unforgettable book."—D. Nurkse, author of The Fall
- GenresPoetry
63 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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September 18, 2007found a recipe for a delicious israeli couscous salad, a "muffin-top" workout, and a hotpink post-it note reminding me to buy my friend's wedding makeup.
but, outside of the random memorabilia, this collection is subtle and fresh. what first got me interested:
SECOND HELPINGS
I wear my heart on my sleeve,
or rather both sleeves, since
it's usually broken.
Sometimes when I join my hands
to pray, the jagged edges
briefly touch,
like a plate that fell and cracked
apart from being asked
to hold too much.
but, outside of the random memorabilia, this collection is subtle and fresh. what first got me interested:
SECOND HELPINGS
I wear my heart on my sleeve,
or rather both sleeves, since
it's usually broken.
Sometimes when I join my hands
to pray, the jagged edges
briefly touch,
like a plate that fell and cracked
apart from being asked
to hold too much.
May 22, 2016
What Brehm does quite well in this collection -- and it's something I'd wish to emulate in my own writing -- is thread together sense data. My favorite poems here, such as "Coney Island" and "Sound Check, Lower Manhattan," are more or less lists of impressions drawn from various places, but these lists are arranged in such a way that something like an argument falls out of them, with minimal overt rhetorical scaffolding. A nifty trick.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews