Review of The Architecture of Chance in Trumpet

Issue 5 of Poetry Ireland's literary pamphlet Trumpet (Spring 2016) carries Michael S. Begnal's review of The Architecture of Chance - in a piece also discussing Trevor Joyce's Rome's Wreck and Peter O'Neill's The Dark Pool.

Begnal describes the book's devices as "similar perhaps to Dada, Oulipo or the more recent Flarf poets" and remarks that despite such practices often being looked upon as "rarefied or merely academic exercises" the work is in fact "deeply engaged with the world, at times outright political". He uses examples as varied in approach as 'XXXXX', 'From Something to Nothing', 'Prime Time' and 'Two Nudes' to discuss the book's concerns (its "wry socioeconomic critique" among others) and concludes with the view that The Architecture of Chance "manages to be continually engaging, often surprising, and frequently funny".

My thanks to Michael Begnal for his perceptive and generous reading of the book, and to Poetry Ireland's Paul Lenehan for commissioning it for Trumpet.

The issue also features an essay by Enda Coyle-Greene - arising out of last year's cross-stream: ways of writing project - in which she writes about the composition of her poem 'Metathesis'.

Other articles in Trumpet 5 include reviews of books by Breda Wall Ryan and Connie Roberts, an appreciation of C. K. Williams by Michael O'Loughlin, a piece on poetry in Belfast by Stephen Connolly, and poems by Blake Morrison, Doireann N� Ghr�ofa and Gabriel Rosenstock.