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Review: The Caprices, by James Byrne

Niall McDevitt

A collaboration, an illuminated text, a setting of Goya to music. Byrne's The Caprices is a very rich experience to read alongside the original Caprichos images. One is particularly struck by how on the pulse both the images and poems are, individually, but also revealing a third entity which is the images and poems together. This poetic response is a tour de force within the constraints of form and yet it moves with a mercury dash.