Radio
The Arts Tonight, CBS Stereo, 6:30 p.m.
The World Poetry Festival, running this week at Toronto's Harbourfront, will be highlighted on the show through Friday with interviews and readings by some of the 24 poets in attendance. Tonight, David Gascoyne.

Television
Shannon's Deal, NBC, 10 p.m.
Filmmaker John Sayles created this quirky amalgam of comedy and drama last season and it was an immediate hit with many critics. Set in the contemporary "new south," it revolves around the activities of a down-and-nearly-out lawyer, Jack Shannon (played by Jamey Sheridan), who takes just about any case that walks into his office.

Recordings
Night Ride Home, Joni Mitchell
(Geffen GEFC-24302)
In her first album release since 1988, Mitchell backtracks over her experimental jazz stage and falls right back into her old folkie ways. The result is a low-key, accessible work in which the singer caresses her own poetic images with simple acoustic guitar (accompanied predominantly by the supple, jazz-tinged bass lines of husband and producer Larry Klein).

Books
Something Happened Here, by Norman Levine (Penguin, $27.95)
Levine's prose is spare and lean, but it serves him well in these eight short stories.