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

The Beginning of Wisdom

Like many other writers of his time, H.G. Wells thought of himself as a Man of the Future, but his style of self-presentation remained Victorian.

  • Vivian Gornick

Orientalism Revisited

Edward Said’s unfinished critique.

  • Lawrence Rosen

Inside Madrasa

A personal history.

  • Ebrahim Moosa

Holyoke Mass., an Ethnography

A short story

  • Ivelisse Rodriguez

The Quiet Man

John McGahern’s Ireland.

  • Roger Boylan

Good Will

Stranger than Fiction is an unexpectedly delightful film that brings whimsy and grown-up humor back to the movies.

  • Alan A. Stone

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Last Laughs

The poems and fiction of Kenneth Koch.

  • Tanya Larkin

Whole New World

On Alice Notley.

  • Brian Teare

Bewitched

Harryette Mullen's Recyclopedia.

  • Joyelle McSweeney

Review: biography of water

Poems experimental in form and timeless in rhythm and imagery.

  • Nadia Herman Colburn

Review: Journey to the Lost City

By Jonathan Aaron.

  • Jana Prikryl

Review: Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk

By Joshua Marie Wilkinson.

  • Kathleen Rooney

Review: Quarantine

Poems that need to be experienced as a whole.

  • Zack Finch

Review: Past Imperfect

By Suzanne Buffam.

  • Sandra Lim

Border Crossings

  • Landis Everson

Revealed

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge's I Love Artists.

  • Susan Barba

Flag

For Christopher Nealon

  • Noah Eli Gordon

Microreview: Matt Hart, Who’s Who Vivid/Revelated

Two new collections with a quirky, edgy, original, and endlessly energetic voice.

  • Victoria Chang

Visitation

  • Stephanie Pippin

From The Us

  • Joan Houlihan

I was astonished at the mysterious slow-motion quality

  • Martha Ronk

Microreview: Stephen Burt, Parallel Play

  • Robert Schnall

Microreview: Daisy Fried, My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again

Poems with an indie-film aesthetic.

  • Fred Muratori

Marc Gaba

Winner of the ninth annual poetry context
Introduced by C.D. Wright

  • Marc Gaba
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