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

Fiction, Film and TV, Literature, Music, Poetry, Visual Art

In My 31st Year

OK, so it’s true
that last week I let Andrew,
half in the bag, a little 
     crumpled,
cuff my wrists, then
perhaps, too familiar, wing an 
     arm
around my neck . . .

  • Marcus Wicker

Trading Post

Swap an Aztec maiden for a 
     cask of mezcal
or a swine for a boy. For
     compass follow the ship
     ahead
scanning the water for slaves 
     fed to the sea.

  • Desirée Alvarez

Announcing the 2016 Winner of Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Contest

Congratulations to Cori A. Winrock, winner of this year's contest!

  • Boston Review

Grief

This view of the cliffs.
A passing cloud.

A scattering of yellow paint.
A pink feather on the wire.

  • Emily Pettit

Something Blue

Two people I love are parting.
     I left
my shoes in the desert. Maybe
     I’m like
a wedding, I have a formal
     need to make
these two ideas meet . . .

  • Laura Eve Engel

One Long Poem

A stunning trove of letters from Elizabeth Bishop to her therapist sheds light on the personal secrets that shaped her poetry.

  • Heather Treseler

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Mother

I want to get
to the managed care
evening,
where the future appears
to stream directly
into the past . . .

  • Rae Armantrout

Unquote

Take this cup away from me
with its hints

of ammonia and dill,
oak or corrosion.

Who knows, really?

  • Rae Armantrout

The Ideology of the Olympics

The Olympics have long tried to obscure the political nature of sport.

  • Robert L. Kehoe III

A Separate Incident

Burdick has come through. It
wasn’t easy, or, apparently,
     that
difficult. . . . 

  • John Ashbery

White Leghorns

On the cruelties the South doles out to animals, children, and black folks.

  • Colin Dayan

Kind Permission

Almost tonight, let’s not and say
     we did.
I used to be a slightly handsome
     boy, then
this happened. . . .

  • John Ashbery

Poet’s Sampler: b: william bearhart, introduced by Natalie Diaz

Because two brothers make a
     body where none existed
God drew two bodies as one
     went crooked . . .

  • b: william bearhart
  • Natalie Diaz

The Passions

Tilda Swinton, icon of indy cinema, is masterful in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash.

  • Alan A. Stone

Paul Park’s Hidden Worlds

Paul Park’s fantasy troubles the line between fiction and reality.

  • John Crowley

The Sound of Her Voice

Sarah Howe interviewed by Lily Blacksell

  • Sarah Howe
  • Lily Blacksell

Summer Poetry Reading

New books to savor in the summer sun.

  • Boston Review

The Siege

I asked my husband to let the woman go.

  • Shruti Swamy

What Have We Done?

David Baker's virtuosic poems express ideas through the senses.

  • Sherod Santos

A Different Mountain

Review of Rebecca Wolff's One Morning—

  • Alan Gilbert

My Somniloquist

I can’t paint your image, it’s the image every portrait
mourns. It’s the art we still dream once was.

  • William Brewer

TV of the Gods

The gods offer blank slates. The gods offer black marker smiles. They offer profit, excess, cardboard
box-headed children to the void so I don’t have to.

  • Nathan Taylor

Questioning Creativity

Poetry reading Q&As can be revelatory or awkward, dreadful or wise.

  • Sean Singer

Animal Love

Of course they love, says my
     student. I slap
my dog sometimes when he
     comes to my bedside
just to see if . . .

  • Ricardo Pau-Llosa
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