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

Grass Psalm

  • Aleš Debeljak
  • Andrew Zawacki

Helpmate

  • Nick Admussen

Writing on White Air

Three new poetry books.

  • Jennifer Grotz

Ian McEwan’s Family Values

 A once-in-a-generation writer.

  • Roger Boylan

Unnecessary Noise Prohibited

  • C. Durning Carroll

In the Scanner

  • Robley Evans

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Trapped

Nine Lives directed by Rodrigo García.

  • Alan A. Stone

Keeping Company

  • Geoffrey G. O’Brien

Surrender of Breda

  • Ernest Hilbert

Winter Field

  • Joanna Klink

Poet’s Sampler: Dan Chelotti

  • Dan Chelotti
  • Dara Wier

France’s Revolt

Can the Republic live up to its ideals?

  • John R. Bowen

A Cartoon World

Daniel Clowes’s “comic-strip novel” Ice Haven.

  • Ken Parille

Borrowed Lines

  • Susan M. Schultz

My Husband Sat Up

  • Caroline Knox

Victim of the Culture of Facelessness

  • Thylias Moss

December Story

A short story. 

  • D.S. Sulaitis

Chamber Heart

  • Andrew Shields
  • Anne Duden

A Poet’s Hope

  • Marjorie Perloff

Site

  • John Kinsella

After the Double No

The EU’s best hope

  • Jan-Werner Müller

Orphan

A short story. 

  • T.E. Holt

Eighth Annual Poetry Contest

This year’s winner: Mike Perrow

  • Mike Perrow
  • Mark Strand

A Poet’s Hope

On the work of Paul Celan.

  • Marjorie Perloff
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