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

Reading Frederick Seidel 

The Cosmos Poems and Life on Earth.

  • Calvin Bedient

Review: How to Do Things with Tears

By Allen Grossman.

  • James Longenbach

Review: Carson, Fulton, Rankine

Poetic experiments in three mid-career books.

  • BK Fischer

Microreviews: October/November 2001

Ten new poetry collections. 

Fourth Annual Poetry Contest Winner: D. A. Powell

Introduced by Carl Phillips

  • D. A. Powell

Poet’s Sampler: Robert Fitterman

Introduced by Bruce Andrews

  • Robert Fitterman

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Right down to the melody of rain…

  • Karen Zusman

Lust for Life

  • James Tate

Sonnet Macaronic

  • Jennifer Scappettone

Seaweeds

  • Laurie Sheck

Toward Lethargy: A Solo for One Vice

  • Brett Fletcher Lauer

The Attention Lesson

  • P. F. Potvin

Zombie Sunday

  • Joshua Bell

A Quick One Before I Go (November 14)

  • David Lehman

Zhang Yimou’s Long Road Home

The personal and aesthetic odyssey of China's premier director.

  • Alan A. Stone

Becoming Literature

James Merrill's poetry of autobiography and social comedy.

  • Stephanie Burt

Monkey Sí

A short story. 

  • Manuel Muñoz

Secret Histories

Creating a Colombian national identity through crime fiction.

  • Santiago Gamboa

Review: By the Sea

By Abdulrazak Gurnah.

  • Patrick Erouart-Siad

Review: A Few Corrections and The Partnership

By Brad Leithauser and Barry Unsworth. 
 

  • James Sallis

Review: The Rights of Desire

By André Brink. 

  • Roger Boylan

Reading Gjertrud Schnackenberg

The Throne of Labdacus and Supernatural Love.

  • Christina Davis

Review: Revenants

By Mark Nowak.

  • Alan Gilbert

Review: Comp.

By Kevin Davies.

  • Brian Kim Stefans
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