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

Family Farms vs. Americanism

Below the surface–and sometimes above it–a lot of today’s debates around immigration reform are about cultural assimilation.

  • Claude S. Fischer

“Discovery” Poetry Contest Winners

  • Jessica Fjeld
  • Jenny George
  • Margaret Reges
  • Kit Schluter

Boxing’s Labor Problem

Boxing, longtime domain of the blue-collar fighter, has suddenly become the playground of the one percent.

  • Joel Calahan

from Notes for an Opening

  • Wendy Xu

“Purity” and the “Avant-Garde”

I am sick of the term “avant-garde.”

  • John Yau

Sally Mann’s Romantic Ideal

“Dear Sir, I don’t like the way you crossed me out.”

  • Judith Levine

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Meadows

  • Tyler Meier

Unfortunate Consequences in Everyday Life

  • John Gallaher

A Freedom in Being Minor

Jeff Alessandrelli interviews John Gallaher

  • John Gallaher
  • Jeff Alessandrelli

Pinky’s Rule

  • Charles Bernstein

Styles for Him—and Her

Unisex Fashion Fought the Gender Binary, and the Binary Won

  • Philip N. Cohen

Two Poems

  • Chloe Garcia Roberts

Distress Tolerance Handout 5

  • Walt Hunter

Lansing Year

  • Marshall Thomas

Life Sings with Many Voices

Eduardo Galeano began as a propagandist, convinced of a single dogmatic truth. He became an artist.

  • Nathan J. Robinson

Make the Beast

  • Kate Ward Sugar

Can a Poem Listen?

Variations on Being-White

  • Ailish Hopper

Human Frailties

Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu

  • Alan A. Stone

Three Poems

  • Rosa Alcalá

At the Birthplace of Sound

  • Akil Kumarasamy

Document d’Oiseaux: Official Report on Birds

Translated from the Japanese by Yuki Tanaka and Mary Jo Bang

  • Shūzō Takiguchi

from LAND

  • Julie Kantor

Ruin

Online shaming is a cathartic alternative to real efforts at social change.

  • Meghan O’Gieblyn

Aubade (The Son Rising)

  • Jonathan Moody
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