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

Nightspot

  • Daniel Tiffany

The Peculiar Gnosis of Trains

  • Elizabeth Scanlon

Joining the Dark

  • Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Poet’s Sampler: Toni Burge

Introduced by David St. John

  • Toni Burge

He Paves the Road with Iron Bars

  • Caroline Knox

Seasonal

  • Shannon Welch

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If It’s Anywhere, It’s Behind Us

Winner of the Eleventh Annual Boston Review Short Story Contest.

  • D.S. Sulaitis

The Lost Ones

John Banville's existentialist novels.

  • Roger Boylan

A Lunatic Faith

Writing an epistolary novel. 

  • Elisabeth Robinson

A Knot of Obsessions

The Collected Poems of Ted Hughes.

  • Carol Bere

Fellow Travelers

Fanny Howe's Gone.

  • Karen Volkman

Their Kind of Town

New collections from young American poets.

  • Stephanie Burt

Microreviews: February/March 2004

Seven new publications.

A Good Look

The Station Agent, directed by Thomas McCarthy.

  • Alan A. Stone

Microscopic Winter I

  • Cynthia Cruz

Microscopic Winter II

  • Cynthia Cruz

Aqueous Gold

  • Arthur Sze

Gamine

  • Lucie Brock-Broido

Les Livres

  • Nadia Herman Colburn

This Is a Recording

  • Jonah Winter

Portrait of Lucy with Fine Nile Jar

  • Lucie Brock-Broido

Poet’s Sampler: Karla Kelsey

Introduced by Bin Ramke

  • Karla Kelsey

from The Face

  • David St. John

A Mostly Irish Farce

A farce is a powerful force

  • Roger Boylan
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