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
Browse Criticism by Topic
Two Poems
No man was ever buried by the desert.
It takes years to cover a dead camel.
Men rest on top like a crust, bones
in their biplanes, a red and white stripe
All Rights Reserved
Every word is Trademarked™, Restricted® or Copyrighted©. Why was this something to celebrate?
Self-Defense
Four car-jackings in three weeks in my suburb;
god sends helicopters and I fall asleep with heat-visions,
nestled in the hum of their rotors; I sleep quite well
The Conditions Are Always Impossible
Lily Blacksell talks to Luke Kennard about poetry, fiction, and the writing process.
Tweeting @ Thoreau
Walden is often championed as an anti-technology manifesto. But this misses the value Thoreau found in conversations spread across vast spans of time and distance.
Who Cares What the Future Brings
Mónica de la Torre’s new book, The Happy End / All Welcome, is expansive, inventive, and often hilarious.
Frederick Douglass Is Dead
& might very well remain that way,
despite the best attempts
of our present overlord to resurrect
Frank Bidart’s Mirror
The collected poems of Frank Bidart provide an incisive index of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Triptych
But for is always game.
A man can be murdered
twice, but for science,
his body a pool of blood
Synchronized Swim
Ophélia watches the girl
spin down through the blue depths,
burrowing in until we see
just the tips of her toes
Unreliable Witnesses
From scrapbooks to family albums, a new book presents their visual testimonies from Kashmir.
Two Poems
Let’s go on a date! Let’s make a joke
of the MEAL PART, wadding our napkins
into strangled swans, and ordering only
shoestring fries with malt vinegar,
Michael Mann Filmography in Rondeau Cinquain
They face the bed equals of half shadow.
They're dying to crash, immersed in oboe.
This city knows pain, a series of nerves
The One
you drive down the street
with one gallon left
go to the only bar in town
find one stool, have one beer
meet the one person
Two Poems
I would toss Marlboros out
in the dream of discipline. Milk in a bottle heating
in the sunlight.
I prayed, likely infected
by the warm climate
It’s Possible to Be Parasitic
It’s possible to keep a secret
Eat a piece of fruit every minute
Of the day for example keep a bag of raisins
Hidden nearby or really listen
Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again
Junot Díaz talks with Atwood about The Handmaid’s Tale, political dystopias, and Drake.
To the Piano Burning on the Beach
The piano—burning in stages and in parts—
made more complex music than earth had ever heard.
Its upright lid crashed down in an explosion
of crazy fireballs the piney woods sucked in.
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