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

Pauli Murray, Beloved Radical

Crusading for black rights, women’s equality, and gender non-conformity.

  • Kenneth W. Mack

The Volatile I

Alejandra Pizarnik’s poetry finally gets the English translation it deserves.

  • Johannes Göransson

The Words,

  • Mark Irwin

The Visigoths

Zoloft and Paxil and Prozac. Daily pills to save us from defeat.

  • Olivia Clare

Lola Ridge: The Radical Modernist We Won’t Forget Twice

The past-due revival of Lola Ridge: poet, editor, feminist, and political activist.

  • Terese Svoboda

Selected Poems by Lola Ridge

  • Lola Ridge

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These Miles

  • Aaron Coleman

Survey Says . . .

Polling can be useful, even when imprecise

  • Claude S. Fischer

“Luminaires” and “The City of Fremont Streets Department”

  • John Mullen

“moon as my witness” and “scrapers parody buddha”

  • Amber Atiya

“Lilies” for C. D. Wright (1949-2016)

A lyric tribute to the celebrated American poet, who passed in early January.

  • Laynie Browne

Want (18) and (19)

  • Rusty Morrison

New Poetry, February 2016

New books from Juan Felipe Herrera, Caroline Knox, Susie Timmons, and more.

  • Boston Review

Pigs

Two men test their ethical and spiritual mettle by raising and slaughtering pigs.

  • Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

Parade

  • Bret Shepard

A Strange and Quiet Fullness

The poet Charles Simić is the ultimate ideological skeptic.

  • Robert Archambeau

Trump and Cruz Battle for Evangelical Hearts

Spiritual warfare on the campaign trail.

  • Laura Premack

Footnoting Biggie Lyrics Like Why Christmas Missed Us

  • David Tomas Martinez

Oddities

  • Barbara Tramonte

Meditations on Embodiment

What do Joy Division and German far-left revolutionaries have in common?

  • Robert Archambeau

What Made It Good

  • Allyson Paty

The Invisibility of Black Women

Black women too often go missing—from civil rights history and from our lives.

  • Christopher Lebron

Teacher Feature

Poet-teachers on teaching poetry.

  • Boston Review

Teacher Feature: A New Magnetic Center

  • Heather Christle
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