Occasion to celebrate: a new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureateher first in five years. Rita Dove's magnificent poems pay homage to our kaleidoscopic cultural heritagefrom the glorious shimmer of an operatic soprano to Bessie Smith's mournful wail, from paradise lost to angel-food cake, from hotshots at the local shooting range to the Negro jazz band in World War I whose music conquered Europe before the Allied advance. Like the ballroom-dancing couple of the title poem, smiling and making the difficult seem effortless, Dove explores the shifting surfaces between perception and intimation. Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar, makes her way through crowds to receive the award. A girl in Harlem studies the flirtations of the adult world, so that someday she too can "pop right out." Fred Astaire once proclaimed, "I just put my feet in the air and move them around." Like Astaire, Dove, speaking intimately to us as we lean in, is such a master that we never notice the labor of creation.

Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.