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.
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Criticism, Poem, Memoir, Short Story
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In which Refaat Alareer is dying as an old man & Henry Kissinger has died young
In the parallel world in which gesture is followed /
by recompense
Lonesome Would Mean Nothing to Me at All
Teachers told him it was unlikely a child could slip or tumble from that great a height without pushing or prompting. Impossible, they meant to say.
Two Photographs
The first capturing your gaze into nowhere
the other when you covered your face with your hands
so you were not anonymous, only unseen
The Ghost of Gabriel García Márquez
On the Nobel Prize–winning writer’s posthumously published novel, Until August.
Naming the Unnamed War
Bertrand Tavernier’s daring documentary about the Algerian revolution sought to break the silence in France.
“We Are Neither Prophets nor Mad”
An interview with poet Fady Joudah about writing his latest collection amid war in Gaza.
Esprit de l’escalier
Why didn’t I just say / people like us here / at this table / should not just talk about politics
Three Poems
Relying a little less on the odd language we’d been left inside /
we turned back to feeling: — / more moan, more mumble.
Beneath the Razor Wire
Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s new film exposes the violent contradictions at the heart of EU border policy.
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