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

Three Footnotes

  • Eliot Weinberger

What Is “Authentic”?

  • John Bradley

Longing for the Real

  • Hosea Hirata

Our Scandal

  • Charles Simic

In Search of the Authentic Other

The Araki Yasusada “hoax” and what it reveals about the politics of poetic identity.

  • Marjorie Perloff
with responses from
  • Charles Simic
  • Hosea Hirata
  • John Bradley
  • Eliot Weinberger
  • Stephen Owen
  • Greg Glazner & Jon Davis
  • Juliana Chang & Walter K. Lew & Tan Lin & Eileen Tabios & John Yau
  • Arthur Vogelsang

In Search of the Authentic Other

The Araki Yasusada "hoax" and what it reveals about the politics of poetic identity.

  • Marjorie Perloff

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A Knock on the Door

  • James Tate

Elsewhere, things tend

  • Claudia Rankine

Like God,

  • Lynn Emanuel

Papyrus

  • Eamon Grennan

Poet’s Sampler: Jeff Clark

  • Heather McHugh
  • Jeff Clark

Logic

  • Emily Fragos

Jules Jr Michael Jules Jr

Winner of Fourth Annual Short Story Contest

  • Kiki DeLancey

The Master of Ceremonies

  • Charles Simic

High Windows and Four-Letter Words

Ssaying "fuck" and "bloody" is like contemplating the depth of the ocean.

  • Stephanie Burt

Review: W. S. Merwin’s The Vixen

  • Richard Howard

Talking to Little Birdies

  • Charles Simic

Democratic Detective

The novels of Paco Taibo Ignacio II reveal the raw sewage of Mexican politics — and a labyrinth of solidarity hidden beneath it.

  • Scott Sherman

Review: Lucie Brock-Broido’s The Master Letters

  • Bonnie Costello

Imagining the Nation

On poetry from Vietnam.

  • Nguyen Ba Chung

No Runs, No Hits, No One Left on Base

Winner of Third Annual Short Story Contest

  • Mary Ann Jannazo

Letter to Horace

A creative reflection on the Roman poet.

  • Joseph Brodsky

Writing About Revolution

Revolutions are acts of hope. That’s why they are the terrain of novelists as much as historians.

  • Edwin Frank

Identity and Immunity

In the face of the AIDS crisis, physical expressions of love are as revolutionary as the act of writing poetry.

  • Rafael Campo
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