Aside from the fabled series of "Paris Review" printed interviews, for the past 30 years "New Letters on the Air" has recorded the best spoken interviews with such literary luminaries as Edward, P. Jones, John Irving, and Salmon Rushdie, not to mention Gwendolyn Brooks, Marilynne Robinson, and Jane Smiley. From its mid-American outpost at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, the venerable literary quarterly, "New Letters" -- once known as "The University Review" -- has collected fireside-chatty conversations and readings by dozens of America's literati. These half-hour segments may be mined for excerpts, though they deserve to be aired in their entirety, along with well-chosen, never-distracting musical snippets in the background.

In one of its liveliest programs the listener can savor the way former American poet laureate Rita Dove, in her 1996 book, "Mother Love," uses classical mythology to deal with her daughter Aviva. Even better, public radio fans can listen up and vicariously fox trot with Dove and her husband Fred Viebahn in her 2006 tuxedo-and-ballroom-gown of a poetry collection, "American Smooth."

Kick up your heels with lovely Rita Dove!