How to Prove a Theory

by Nicole Tong

In this brave, elegiac debut, How to Prove a Theory, Nicole Tong relies on empirical evidence to construct meaning in the wake of a series of losses that include a childhood lost to trauma, a best friend lost following childbirth, a brother-in-law, a father, and a generation of children in the poet's hometown after a water contamination event. In the face of loss, the poet describes grief as embodied: "I know / neither how to hold you up nor where / to safely place you down." Revelation's uncanny comfort comes as the "process called trust / keeps happening."

Readers will observe Tong's lyrical kinship with poetic predecessors Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore as she seeks to name and explain the inexplicable. Along the way, Tong turns to the visual art of Doris Salcedo, Alice Neel, Monica Cook, Joseph Cornell, and others to articulate absence through post-apocalyptic landscapes, lyrical hypotheses, and mysterious persona poems that make music more than they mourn: "You are everything / if not each moment before. O / transitivity. O verb waiting to be." Trust this poet and her collection to honor the lost and celebrate the living.

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 2017

Reviews

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very creative; I definitely would recommend this book to fellow poetry lovers. The author shows an originality uncommon in many modern poets. I would rate this selection as one of the top five I have read this year, and I read a lot of volumes of poetry! My copy was won from the Goodreads website and I appreciate the opportunity to read and review this work.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about loss, family, grief, and survival.

from Sister: "I knew what you knew: the difference / between not speaking and letting something go // unspoken. Between what actually happened / and the mythologies we tell our husbands decades / later."

from Inaccurate Theory: "Leaves resist falling. The hum around her, / the applause of blackbird wings. Light / finds an opening. // In this place, she is her own / collapse."

from Gentle Obsessions: "When I folded the memory / of your death in to an accordion shape // and tossed it to the sea, I was certain it would play / a hymn like the ones you loved. And you were right: // the soul knows how to sustain itself / despite submersion, to give up the land's edge // lost to the flood until everything is the horizon."

[Caroline Bock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of poetry, How to Prove a Theory, grabbed me from the second poem, "Sister" -- Forget about smoking weed/with soccer players in the woods/near the Methodist Church. Tong goes out with such specific grace in her award-winning book of poems that I couldn't put it down (full disclosure - she won the poetry prize at the press where my debut short story collection CARRY HER HOME won the fiction prize!). She has several poems about theory in this collection -- several on grief and death, though I preferred her "Intimacy Theory, which ends on You are everything/if not a brief moment before. O/transitivity. O verb waiting to be." Ah, so nice!

[Megan Stolz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a bit biased because I know the poet, but this is a beautiful collection. The poems are quiet but demand attention, the subject matter will linger with you until you've finished turning the pages.

[Aj · Rating 5 out of 5]

i’m not a poetry person.

i curled up with this one night before bed. ate it whole, because i hadn’t had dinner.

i read it again the next night. i think there were nightmares.

it gets harder to read, each time through.

i guess because i’m not a poetry person?

[Alissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC received via telekinesis in April 2017. This is the greatest book of poetry ever written. Don't you dare miss out.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need more than 5 stars...

at LEAST another 5...preferably 10.

ABSOLUTELY, without a doubt, one of THE BEST debut poetry books I've ever read. Hands down. A must read.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully crafted poems that breathe in memory and loss and exhale resilience.

[Cristine (cristinethebookqueen) Paquette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection left me with a beautiful sadness deep in my core. A gorgeous insight into loss and life, I’ve already reread my favorites several times.