Brouwer is a young poet whose first book has not yet had time to elicit a great deal of published criticism. Considering, however, that Exactly What Happened has already won two distinguished awards for poetry, one can safely assume that Brouwer's work has received favorable recognition from critics and readers in general. Brouwer was selected for one of the awards, the Verna Emery Poetry Prize sponsored by Purdue University, by Lucia Perillo, herself a former Emery winner in 1996. Writing for the university's press, Perillo describes Exactly What Happened as "both canny and innocent, hopeful one minute and bleak the next, and always mordantly funny." She goes on to say that the poems "are spoken in the voice of the guy on the corner, without any poetic curlicues" and that their subjects "will make you think that you can feel the poet's hand tipping your head so...