My Brother Goes Down to the Sea is John Gribble's second full-length collection. The poems explore various bodies of water - ranging in size from from ponds in public parks to the Pacific Ocean - along with family lives and stories, relationships, elegiac memories, works of art and music, and sharp-eyed observations of everyday Tokyo..
The book also explores forms from various traditions, including the ghazal from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, Japanese haibun, haiku, and senryu, as well as the soneto, a new fourteen-line form based on traditional Japanese forms.