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

Review: Clarvoe, Doris, Klink

A second book of poems and two debut collections.

  • Laura Sims

Microreviews: Summer 2001

Nine new poetry collections.

Poet’s Sampler: Sam Truitt

Introduced by C. D. Wright

  • Sam Truitt

An Inner Life for Dummies

  • Lisa Beskin

One for the Guys

  • Liam Rector

Objects in Mirror Are Closer than They Appear

  • Peter Gizzi

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Butter and Eggs

  • Harry Matthews

Genius Made

  • Corinna Vallianatos

Boy at the Border of His Own Allegory

  • Lucie Brock-Broido

Cyril Method

  • Craig Dworkin

Beginning with a Phrase from Simone Weil

  • Peter Gizzi

the noise of time

  • David Antin

The Uses and Abuses of Photojournalism

Do we approach the photograph as spectators, or as citizens of the world?

  • Susie Linfield

Homecoming

A short story. 

  • Pauls Toutonghi

The Kingdom of Moravia

The Marxist-inspired moralism of the acclaimed Italian novelist. 

  • Bill Marx

Review: Paradise Park

By Allegra Goodman.

  • Joyce Hackett

Review: Talking in the Dark

By Laura Glen Louis. 

  • Randall Curb

Review: Beloved Stranger

By Clare Boylan.

  • Jennifer Howard

Review: The Song of the Earth

By Hugh Nissenson. 

  • Roger Boylan

The Last Gentleman

A friend and student remembers Richard Yates.

  • James Crumley

Review: The Beforelife

By Franz Wright.

  • Ethan Paquin

“Let the World be a Black Poem”

On The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry.

  • Tina Barr

Review: The Promises of Glass

By Michael Palmer.

  • Andrew Zawacki

Review: Letters to Wendy’s

By Joe Wenderoth. 

  • John D’Agata
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