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

Three Poems

  • Tom Thompson

Nearly Baroque

Nearly Baroque poets want art that puts excess, invention, and ornament first.

  • Stephanie Burt

Postpartum Hemorrhage

  • Sandra Simonds

Dear Ancestors

  • Filip Marinovich

Two Poems

  • Circe Maia
  • Jesse Lee Kercheval

from The Bear Letters

  • Rebecca Kutzer-Rice

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Three Poems

  • Kim Kyung Ju

Metamorphosis as an Answer

  • Tory Adkisson

Getting Around It

  • Lisa Lubasch

Three Poems

  • Robert Okaji

when the end is near

  • Amber Atiya

Marking Sacred Time

A collection of Pashtun women's landays.

  • Heather Hewett
  • Eliza Griswold

Three Poems

  • Samantha Zighelboim

Odysseus Amongst the Swine Glances Towards Ithaca

  • Dan Chelotti

Poems on Surveillance

  • Andrew Ridker
  • Cathy Park Hong
  • Rae Armantrout
  • John Ashbery
  • Robert Pinsky
  • Charles Bernstein
  • Harmony Holiday
  • Noelle Kocot
  • Richard Greenfield
  • Maureen N. McLane
  • Amy King
  • Jennifer Kronovet
  • Jessica Baran

Complaint

  • Josh Bell

Of the Leaves That Have Fallen

  • Rickey Laurentiis
  • Timothy Donnelly

Country on Fire

  • Jennifer Willoughby

Gangsta Folk

If gangsta rap lyrics are evidence of criminality, what are we to make of gruesome murders depicted in many folk and country songs?

  • Simon Waxman

Mother Issues

  • Christa Romanosky

Microreview: Lucy Ives, Orange Roses

A poetic coming-of-age narrative.

  • Katy Lederer

Frank Lima, 1939–2013

Is there any more hopeful and heartening life story in American poetry than that of Frank Lima?

  • Nico Alvarado

Orbit

  • Alice Miller

Thought Cumulus,

  • Alfred Corn
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