Tiny Extravaganzas

by Diane Mehta

Tiny Extravaganzas, Diane Mehta's fiercely lyrical new collection, works the American sentence to its limits. Mehta's poems are miniaturist examinations of art, aging, literature, grief, parenting, the sublime, labor, and faith. She chases rhythm, rhymes with wit, and upends formal verse with phrasing that moves like jazz against and within tradition. Art is both anchor and a framework for understanding the world, and each poem is an opportunity to have a conversation with the reader and with art and other artists. Her poems vary from small, contemplative musical interludes to epic poems about collective suffering. Mehta's refined and propulsive poems come with an emotional bang that quietly breaks your heart.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2023

About the author

Diane Mehta is a poet and writer, born in Germany and raised in India and the U.S. She has an essay collection Happier Far (2025) and two poetry collections, Tiny Extravaganzas (2023) and Forest with Castanets (2019). She was a fellow at Civitella Ranieri and Yaddo, and has been the recipient of a Cafe Royal Foundation and the Peter Heinegg Foundation award. For three years, she has been poet in residence at the New Chamber Ballet in New York City.

Reviews

[Sharon Lin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book — bright, wise, and full of love. I wish I could hold these poems inside myself forever.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely—multilayered and complex, but always with a way in to the heart of each poem. Musings on on interacting with art/dance/music, on loss, on age, on parenting an almost-grown child—sophisticated, knockout imagery, lurking empathy, and inventive, fun-to-read-out-loud language.