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

The Fate of Maria José da Cruz’s Seven Husbands

  • Traci Brimhall

Microreview: Lisa Olstein, Little Stranger

Poems that hum beneath the ordinary.

  • Benjamin Landry

The New Wave of Sad Pizzazz: Three British Poets

Twentieth-century British poetry had many virtues, but it was not overburdened with a sense of style.

  • Dai George

Discrete Series: Vulgate

  • G.C. Waldrep

Microreview: Cyrus Cassells, Crossed-Out Swastika

  • Virginia Konchan

Grieving DFW

Karen Green's Bough Down.

  • Nicole Rudick

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Prairies of Air

Brian Teare's Companion Grasses.

  • Christopher J. Adamson

There Is a Strange Coat in Your Closet

  • Dara Wier

Microreview: Hillary Gravendyk, Harm

Poetry and physical pain.

  • Julie Kantor

The Tide

  • Christopher DeWeese

“Discovery” Poetry Contest Winners

  • Meghan Maguire Dahn
  • Jeremy Schmidt
  • Justin Boening
  • Nava EtShalom

Poem Without Mystery

  • Tadeusz Dąbrowski
  • Antonia Lloyd-Jones

“Here where she shouldn’t be”: On Conceptual Reading

Poetry has less to do with rules and concepts than it does with transgression.

  • Lindsay Turner

Murray, My

  • Dana Levin

The Pacification of Rio, as Observed from a Gondola

Thanks to the teleférico, tourists can comfortably gawk at Brazil's poor.

  • Amy Moran-Thomas

Medieval Troubadours

While the troubadours are known for their romantic attitudes, some poems reveal disturbing aggression towards women.

  • Sandra Simonds

Microreview: Calvin Bedient, The Multiple

One of the most exciting and volatile poets of our time.

  • Daniel Tiffany

Imperial Methods

Peter Matthiessen’s Orientalism.

  • Joel Whitney

Annunciation

  • Courtney Kampa

lotto motto

  • Evie Shockley

National Poetry Month 2014

It's simple: every day in April, we're publishing a poem.

  • Boston Review

Straight Razor

An Interview with Randall Mann

  • Ricardo Maldonado
  • Randall Mann

I Resign

  • Randall Mann

Three Poems

  • Andrew Gorin
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