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

A Moral Fiction

Reading John Champlin Gardner.

  • Charles Johnson

Poet’s Sampler

  • David Blair

Missionary

  • Nick Admussen

Microreview: Lidija Dimkovska, Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers

Swaggering and prosey poems that take on the sorrows of love.

  • Craig Morgan Teicher

Sweet New Style

Lisa Robertson's The Men.

  • Tom Thompson

Enduring Love

André Téchiné’s Changing Times.

  • Alan A. Stone

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In Rut

A short story. 

  • Madeline Kotowicz

Microreview: Noelle Kocot, Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems

Poems that connect country, borough, and marriage.

  • Sarah Cohen

So

  • Hank Lazer

The Footfalls of a Great Criminal

Translated by Clayton Eshleman

  • César Vallejo

Siblings

A short story. 

  • Yvonne Woon

Self-Portrait as Shedding

  • Carey McHugh

Self-Portait as Seismograph

  • Cecily Parks

The Brain’s Tent

Lynette Robert’s Collected Poems.

  • John Wilkinson

ZONED

The Totality for Kids by Joshua Clover.

  • John Palattella

Virgil’s Cow

  • Fredrick Farryl Goodwin

Dr. Death

  • Fredrick Farryl Goodwin

Here

  • Hank Lazer

Make It New

Poetry collections from independent presses.

  • Brian Kim Stefans

Microreview: The Poems of Anna Margolin

The first English translation of the Yiddish poet Anna Margolin’s single volume, Lider.

  • J.D. Nordell

The Conflict Between the Eyes and the Gaze

  • César Vallejo

Coup-de-Soleil

  • Cate Marvin

Native Speaker

An Arab citizen of Israel and a native speaker of Palestinian Arabic, Sayed Kashua writes in Hebrew.

  • Laila Lalami

Microreview: Joshua Beckman, Shake

Poems that investigate the notion of the world as good.

  • Kerri Webster
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