Michael T. Lawson's debut collection, Proof, examines math through the language of poetry and poetry through the language of math. Discover the yawning void of infinity inside childhood guilt; grin alongside the catenary curve as you contemplate bliss; feel, in Cantor dust's rough fractal edges, how deep love can wound. Some of these poems are even mathematical objects—you'll find a statement of a theorem, and its proof, resting inside a sonnet. Whether you love poetry and are curious about math, or you love math and are curious about poetry, this book will tickle your curiosity.
Michael T. Lawson studied writing and biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a PhD in the latter and fostering a love of the former. His first book, Proof, was the Editor's Choice in the 2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Prize by Ashland Poetry Press. His work has been published in Grist Journal, Feign Lit, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and Four Way Review, among others. He currently resides in Boston, MA, where he works as a data scientist.
" 'The only way / I could understand you was mathematics,' Michael Lawson writes in 'Elegy for Larry Levis Ending in an Axiom of Set Theory,' a highly original approach to one's poetry hero. But that's how the speaker in Proof engages our world and its vast range of experiences: as an embodiment of statistics and probability, as mathematical principles in action. Lest that sound too arcane, rest assured: Lawson's poems brim with dazzling phrasing and imagery, with wit and heartfelt storytelling as well as serious intelligence; they are above all a pleasure to read. And his formal range is amazing: in addition to fine free verse, I count a dozen or so traditional poetic forms here, so deftly and subtly handled that his technical achievements may go unnoticed. What a delightful book Proof is, the most distinctive first collection of poems I've read in many years." — Michael McFee, Author of A Long Time to Be Gone
"In Michael T. Lawson's debut collection, Proof, the precision of mathematics collides with the disarray of human longing to create a thrilling form of reasoning. Lawson's formally determined poems attempt to solve, to quantify, to order the chaotic and dangerous randomnesses of the heart. Implicit in Proof is a kind of prayer that our world might behave more like a Markov chain, where the future is independent of the past, and that through mathematics, we might inch closer to comprehending a thing as vast and unknowable as the sublime. Sharp, cerebral, and deeply moving, Proof is wise to the distance between the calculated and the felt, what can be demonstrated and what remains the domain of hope." — Ross White, Author of Guilt Ledger
"The poems in Michael Lawson's splendid debut book are a marvelous mashup of science, mathematics and a deep measure of the human soul. Remembering an early lesson in aerodynamics, the poet blends in a memory of one of his first airplane flights, 'eyes wide with wonder/at the swiftness of the desert' seeming to speed under the plane. Again and again, Proof shows the work of how the equations of the mind and spirit eventually add up to awe." — Michael Chitwood, Author of A Day of It
