“In her innovative debut, Mehta explores the connection between place, memory, and sound, offering a vision of “ex-colonial hills,” their “songs lilting,” their “repetitions hell.” Discrete poems and hybrid texts are unified by their vibrant sonic textures.” Publishers Weekly

“A beautiful book…Mehta traces the gentle and eccentric routes of spirituality, with an emphasis on spirit.” Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions.

“Mehta, in Forest with Castanets, reminds us of just what striking poetry can emerge from an imagination disciplined and venturesome enough to take advantage of the rich, complicated histories that we are all given, and in doing this she manages to compose and sing the ‘sea-chants of dead immigrants’.” —Kwame Dawes

“Candor and music are Diane Mehta’s great strengths as an artist, and with them she brings fresh, stereotype-busting insight to subjects like ethnicity, marriage, sex, religion, the multiple, intertwined horrors and gifts of the past.”—Robert Pinksy

“The poems in Forest with Castanets are uncommonly lush—as pleasurable to the tongue as they are to the ear—but this work is also fearless about its passions, exploring family traditions and histories through the lens of what makes them and also what breaks them.”—Lynn Melnick