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

Radical Formalism

Keston Sutherland and Geoffrey G. O’Brien in Performance

  • David Gorin

Paradise of Absence

Alan Shapiro's Night of the Republic

  • Jeremy Bass

Instructions for the Trance

  • Lynn Emanuel

Poems Seeking Readers

Flemish by Caroline Knox, and Meme by Susan Wheeler.

  • Jo Ann Clark

Microreview: Rachel Richardson, Copperhead

Leaning into silence.

  • Tess Taylor

Bowerbird

  • Mark Bibbins

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Into Africa

OneTouch travels the African continent, showcasing its natural beauty.

  • Rose Odengo

The Verbal Equivalent of a Homemade Bomb

On Andrew Elliott's Mortality Rate.

  • Beverley Bie Brahic

Days

  • Simone Kearney

Winged

  • Alice Notley

Do Game Changers Matter?

Political science and political reporting.

  • Lynn Vavreck

An America That Never Was: Norman Rockwell’s Vision

American Mirror, the new biography of Norman Rockwell.

  • Elizabeth Hand

Self Portrait as Items in a Snowy Lithograph

  • Lynn Emanuel

Awkward, Diligent: Liu Xiaobo’s Love Poetry

The creative output of the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

  • Nick Admussen

Microreview: Sharmila Cohen and Paul Legault, The Sonnets

Adaptations that preserve Shakespeare’s wit and carpe diem vulgarity.

  • Rebecca Liu

Cave

  • Mark Levine

Travels of Marco

  • Mark Levine

Dialogue

  • Mark Hendrickon

Made to Burn: Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers

A nominee for the National Book Award.

  • Marta Figlerowicz

Gandhi and the Affordable Care Act

He didn’t believe in short-cuts.

  • Glenn C. Loury

Microreview: Jennifer Militello, Body Thesaurus

A collection that moves past the body versus mind duality.

  • Gabrielle Flam

On Canine Dasein: Frank Bidart’s Metaphysical Dog

  • John James

“From Within the Field”: a Survey of the Survey

What models can poetry offer the would-be surveyor?

  • Lindsay Turner

Dream House

  • Ariana Reines
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