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

The Persistence of Torture

The dog violet, pressing a flat ear to the ground,

has news of great importance:

it is spring

and jealousy turns its blade again.

from “The Prospect”

the river was central

each branch arterial

pulling land along with it

in form of pebbles, sand, agglomerate

Elegy with Forest and TVs

Men surrounded by lumber and nails, then suddenly a house with two kids, a dog, swing set
and barbeque, spinning on its street among other homes
on the green grass of this planet.

Young Blue Heron

One thing to do
until you can’t
is wait, foot tentative
testing for deceit

What Is the Anthropocenester?

1. Crisis is a rusted minivan throwing down spike strips on the highway of teleology. The Anthropocenester is in the passenger seat. 

2. Crisis bangs on the table and demands immediate action in the form of risk management or hazard mitigation. The Anthropocenester wipes up the coffee that spilled.

from “A Wilderness”

Yes, I did hold a plague in my pupils. Yes, I did lift up my dress and walk through fields to kill each beetle and pest. The last landscape designated protected was the swamp. The marsh and its salt, weedy tufts of grass stuck up above the flood.

Blockadia

Hormone

Anxiety waits 
for a table 
under a cave painting.

nanta (kata)

The Recorder

2018 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest Winner

Announcing the 2018 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest Winner

Congratulations to Herselman Hattingh

Swallow it Whole

The day cracks itself
on my forehead, like

an egg.

from “Soft Targets”

Don’t blame the wisteria for setting off a feeling like freedom a feeling like joy.

We watched the people walking in the open square—

one of them was a specialist in killing, fear was the way of others.

I’ve seen the most extraordinary thing about people, their faces.

Janelle Monáe for President

What Afrofuturism can teach us about surviving Trump

Mechanics of Action

From far away the child’s singing
            sounds like the cries of a rat
in the mouth of a python.

Left Behind by Korea’s Success

Hwang Sok-yong’s novel Familiar Things sounds a warning about the pitfalls of Korean reunification.

Nobody Would Have Heard You

Motherhood can be a crushing disappointment.

Athena Dreams of a Hollow Body

Once I learned of the existence of mothers, I decided to order one for myself.

Dispatches from the Land of Erasure

Arab American poetry and the work of liberation.

Dispatch from the Land of Erasure (I)

Arab American poetry and the work of liberation.

Dispatch in Two Parts: The Arab Body Writes Itself In

Arab American poetry and the work of liberation.

Fragments of a Song

Arab American poetry and the work of liberation.

Cartographies of Wind

Arab American poetry and the work of liberation.

Instructions for Erasure

Arab American poetry and the work of liberation.

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