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: The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

By Helen Vendler.

  • Matthea Harvey

Microreviews: February/March 1999

Eight new poetry collections.

Channel

  • Peter Sacks

Election

  • Peter Sacks

A Sudden Rain in the Green Mountains

  • Stephanie Burt

Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.

  • Joanna Klink

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The snow was the future perfect of snow

  • Geoffrey G. O’Brien

Counting the Forests

  • Mark Levine

The Sound of Music

  • Lisa Beskin

Oprah’s Nightmare

Beloved. directed by Johnathan Demme.

  • Alan A. Stone

What’s Not in a Name?

  • Neil Shister

Shell Game with Organs

Winner of the Sixth Annual Short Story Contest

  • Jacob M. Appel

Review: The Rings of Saturn

Above all, The Rings of Saturn is a rumination on the mysterious community of the living and the dead.

  • Edwin Frank

Microreviews

December 1998/January 1999

Review: Appalachia

By Charles Wright.

  • James Longenbach

Review: On a Stair

By Ann Lauterbach.

  • Andrew Osborn

Review: Autobiography of Red

By Anne Carson.

  • Elizabeth Macklin

Review: Powell, Ramsdell, Truitt

Reading three first books of poems.

  • Bin Ramke

Microreviews

Eight new poetry collections. 

Poet’s Sampler: Brenda Shaughnessy

Introduced by Richard Howard

  • Brenda Shaughnessy

Jersey City Palms

  • Gilbert Sorrentino

Dearth Demise

  • Bill Knott

December 14

  • David Lehman

Borrowed Love Poems

  • John Yau
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