The Brother Swimming Beneath Me

"In the first line of The Brother Swimming Beneath Me, his long-awaited and stunning debut collection, Brent Goodman announces: "There is no afterlife." But there is: in poem after poem "the eye plays beautiful tricks" with everything it witnesses, and the past is resurrected in mind and heart. For a brother's early death haunts this book, and radiates out from the dazzling title poem at its center to cast its shadow on everything. Yet the author's firm craft and uncommonly mature vision transform loss to a complex, buoyant beauty."---David Graham, author of Stutter Monk

"This is utterly coherent, honed, incisive, articulate and often daring work. There's a full self here, eager to learn and survive, to make sense out of complex longing and grief by intimately evolving with them. Something's truly at stake, in the shorter opening pieces, the haunting brother narratives with their surging variations which ground the book, and the final expressionist proems which despite their struggle through darkness I find immensely energizing and joyous...This is really extraordinary work."---Neil Myers, author of All That So Simple

"In these poems of disquiet and brilliant light, Brent Goodman gives us grief and gravel roads, love and not love, work, rage, war, There is pain here, and wiseass joy in these seldom visited places where the heart gives way and it's the mind - furious, honest, playful, intent - that knows compassion and reason and giving up reason. From the very first poem - be warned. Surprise lives in this book, fierce verve and tenderness."---Marianne Boruch, author of Grace, Fallen from

Brent Goodman's work has appeared in Court Green, Diagram, Diode, No Tell Motel, Rattle, Knockout, Zone 3, Pebble Lake Review, Linebreak, Softblow, Green Mountains Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.