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

Illiberal Reform

Why Did Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Fail?

  • Lisa Blaydes

Microreview: Jackie Clark, Aphoria

  • Lynn Melnick

My Ambition, the Rival

  • Dai George

“At the Mercy of My Poetic Voice”: An Interview with Alice Notley

Plus, a collage and new poems.

  • Lindsay Turner

I Am Vocal and the Salt

  • Alice Notley

The Marriage of Granite and Rainbow: A Biography of Robert Duncan

Lisa Jarnot offers a glimpse into the academic and artistic communities of Robert Duncan.

  • Brian Teare

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Lunch Break with Ted Berrigan and Neighbor’s House on Fire

  • Lynn Emanuel

Microreview: Emily Fragos, Hostage

Poems that remain in the mind. 

  • Tara Neelakantappa Safronoff

Cop and Robber

It was the canal. He’d broken through, broken it, and let it in. To his mother’s backyard. Run, Tommy! 

  • E.H. Dalton

W.H. Auden and Ecopoetics

“By landscape reminded once of his mother’s figure”

  • Robert Archambeau

2013 Poetry Contest Winner: Scott Coffel

  • Linda Gregerson
  • Scott Coffel

Three Stephanies

  • Stephanie Burt

A Conversation with Stephen Burt

The ethics of the imagination: after crossing the threshold into a fantasy world, can we safely dispense with social norms?

  • Monica Youn

Microreview: Bin Ramke, Aerial

Stunning, strange, and original verse. 

  • Noah Eli Gordon

Haven in a Heartless World

Alan Stone reviews Enough Said

  • Alan A. Stone

A Place for Muslim Women

The kinds of sacred spaces we worked for are not just possible; they exist. On the other side of the planet. Under occupation.

  • Haroon Moghul

Microview: Lisa Russ Spaar, Vanitas, Rough

Poems that refuse to leave the body. 

  • Andy Nicole Bowers

Autumn Wind

An ancient autumn poem from the Tang Dynasty. 

  • Li Bai

Do the Right Thing

On Italo Calvino’s letters, 1941–1985.

  • Leland de la Durantaye

Conclusion

  • Rae Armantrout

Sunset

you need to come up with a plan of what to do when you encounter an active shooter situation. 

  • Ben Fama

Three Shorts

Its brilliant mirror-surface buildings seem to belie it. Streets vibrant with history. But the city doesn’t exist.

  • Edmundo Paz Soldán
  • Kirk Nesset

Amendment

  • Brian Foley

Microreview: Betsy Wheeler, Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room

Non-sonnets and other love poems.

  • Lynn Melnick
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