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

Bleeding, Beading, Trickling

Spar by Karen Volkman. 

  • Noah Eli Gordon

Venus Becomes a Document

Talking Cures by Richard Howard.

  • BK Fischer

As If Washing Might Make It Clean

Paul Muldoon's Moy Sand and Gravel.
 

  • Jenny Ludwig

The Unfinishable Robert Lowell

Opening a window onto the life of a great American poet. 

  • James Longenbach

An Indian Realist in a World of Fiction

On writing Bunker 13.

  • Aniruddha Bahal

Adam Thorpe’s One-Man Show

Novellist and Mime Street Entertainer of the Year. 

  • James Hynes

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Iran’s Other Religion

The birthplace of Zarathustianism.

  • Jehangir Pocha

Model for a Square

10th annual Boston Review Short-Story Contest — high commended.

  • Weston Cutter

The River Come Down

10th annual Boston Review Short-Story Contest — high commended.

  • Eben Wood

The Secret History of the Magna Carta

Its most far-reaching provisions aren’t the ones we remember.

  • Peter Linebaugh

Situationist Noir

Reading Jean-Patrick Manchette.

  • Jennifer Howard

City Poems

Ten weeks with the East Harlem Poetry Project.

  • Maureen N. McLane

A Wrong Thing

A short story. 

  • A.L. Kennedy

New Pioneers of the American Short Story

Marshall Boswell and Elizabeth Crane.

  • Tom Bissell

A Dutchman with Very Dark Eyes and Hair You Could Call Raven-black

Writing Duke of Egypt.

  • Margriet de Moor

New Poets on the Block

A roundup of first and second books.

  • Stephanie Burt

The Poet at War

The Invasion Handbook by Tom Paulin. 

  • Benjamin Paloff

Taking Measurements of Will and Circumstance

Two new collections from Garrett Kalleberg.

  • Fred Muratori

Microreviews: April/May 2003

Thirteen new poetry collections.

You Can Be the Subject of Wild Admiration in Ten Days

  • Calvin Bedient

from Blasted Fields of Clover Bring Harrowing and Regretful Sighs

  • Mark Bibbins

Matelot Turnstile

  • Margaret Funkhouser

Momentary Gardens

  • Claire Hero

Unrelenting

  • Joan Houlihan
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