Critical Commentary
In the Georgia Review, Judith Kitchen praised Sea of Faith for its “unified consistency of tone and sophistication of approach,” remarking that the “voice is urbane, humorous, and amused—distanced just enough to poke fun at the world and itself alike, to be able to see the ironies in every predicament.” Kitchen finds that Brehm’s poems give “voice to the complexities of being, handing us back to ourselves through the surety of his craft.”
In awarding Sea of Faith the Brittingham Prize, Carl Dennis described a speaker who 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.”
David Daniel wrote in Ploughshares that “Brehm's poems are sexy, funny, often brilliantly crafted, and wonderfully sweet at their core.” He called Sea of Faith “one of those rare books one can confidently recommend to any friend, even those whose hearts are hardened to poetry.”
