Arts in Society

Boston Review’s Arts in Society section publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and criticism. It focuses on how the arts loosen the hold of convention, bear witness to injustice, provoke new ways of seeing the world, and speak to the most pressing political and civic concerns of our time.

Browse by Genre

Criticism, Poem, Memoir, Short Story

Browse Criticism by Topic

Fiction, Film and TV, Literature, Music, Poetry, Visual Art

Microreview: David Hernandez, Always Danger

Poems that offer a guided tour of the dangers lurking around every corner.

  • Matthew Thorburn

Microreview: Mark Strand, Man and Camel

Poems that play with the high absurd.

  • Charlie Clark

Microreview: Kathy Graber, Correspondence

Poems that move from Heroditus to plastic snap beads, from Kafka to empty storage containers.

  • Tess Taylor

Microreview: Louise Glück, Averno

Poems that challenge the supposed certainty of myths.

  • Zack Finch

With Delicate Hand

  • Nick Twemlow

View of the City

  • Carrie Bennett

Sign up for our newsletter

At the Curved Bridge

  • Carrie Bennett

A Long Romance

  • Allen Grossman

Plunder

  • Michael Robins

The Last Colony

  • Susan Stewart

Poem composed of statements made by George W. Bush in January 2003

  • H.L. Hix

The Nature of Encounters

  • Geoffrey G. O’Brien

Guantánamo

  • Jorie Graham

Metonymic Sonnet

  • Michele Glazer

The Gift

  • James Longenbach

Hydrosaurus

  • Rebecca Reynolds

Streakiness

  • John Ashbery

Poet’s Sampler: Jynne Dilling Martin

  • Jynne Dilling Martin
  • Matthea Harvey

They Are Still Rather Lovely

  • John Ashbery

He Does an Act with Colored Cards

  • Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle

Cymbalta

  • Stephanie Cleveland

Youth Is Not Absolution for Treachery; It Is a Morning Star of Some Kind

  • Travis Nichols

Car Rolls Off Clay Wade Bailey Bridge

  • Erica Bernheim

The Eden Archives

  • John Isles
trending_flat
Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox

A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Donate

Become a Member

Subscribe