John Brehm was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and educated at the University of Nebraska and Cornell University. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, The Southern Review, Epoch, Poetry Northwest, The Best American Poetry, 1999 and other journals. A recipient of fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts and Yaddo, he has taught at Cornell, Emerson College, and Portland State University. He now works as a freelance writer and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About The Way Water Moves:

"These poems go down where the pain is and rise to a vivid sense of the past washing up against the present. Their stories sometimes draw blood, as well as humor, portraits of those who gave us our absurd and dangerous, sometimes exhilarating, world."
—Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek

"I was delighted to encounter here for the first time the poems of John Brehm. The Way Water Moves moved me from the start: the integrity of the collection, the powerful blend of narrative and lyric, the sense of place and moment. Like the astonishing vision in "The Fence," the poems in this collection are perfectly made "to hit me / full force in the back some day years and years from now," as well as right now. They inform my sense of what it is to be alive, and human; for this I thank John Brehm and commend his studious eye to all readers."
—Carole Simmons Oles, author of Sympathetic Systems

"This is a lovely collection, humble as it stands, hat in hand, before the ages; generous and accommodating towards its readers; and altogether free of cleverness, that poison that affects so much contemporary poetry. Brehm's close looks into old age and decline are as honest and clearly put forward as any I have read, anywhere, anytime."
—Ted Kooser, author of Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison