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

Sea by Dusk

  • Joanna Klink

America: Before the Last War

  • Peter Jay Shippy

Seattle, Third and Pike

  • Liz Waldner

Accumulative

  • Ken White

Poet’s Sampler: Greg Wrenn

Introduced by D. A. Powell

  • Greg Wrenn

Credo

  • Andrew Zawacki

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Twenty-first Century Woolf

On The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry. 

  • Alan A. Stone

Skirting the Issue

French literature is out of touch with social realities.

  • Patrick Erouart-Siad

Poet’s Sampler: Aaron Kunin

Introduced by Peter Gizzi

  • Aaron Kunin

Imaginary Places

  • Rae Armantrout

As One

  • Rae Armantrout

La Musica Nova

  • Susan Davis

Hall of Records

  • Emily Fragos

A Man, His Dog, and Some Fish: An Aubade

  • Brian Henry

Portrait

  • Bill Knott

Poem

  • Bill Knott

Prothalamion [I]

  • Timothy Liu

Prothalamion [II]

  • Timothy Liu

Sweet

A short story. 

  • Diane Williams

She Began

A short story. 

  • Diane Williams

Celebrating Presence

Recasting the poetry of loss.

  • Tod Marshall

Laughter and Oblivion

Skid by Dean Young.

  • Sarah Manguso

Poetic IDs

Borrowed Love Poems by John Yau.

  • Thomas Fink

The Uncertainty of Knowing

Carl Phillips' Rock Harbor.

  • James Longenbach
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