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 Book

When two scientists discover a book looted by the Nazis, they seek out the rightful heir and in the process explore the reparations process of early postwar days.

  • Karin Andert
  • Niko Kohls

Direct Expression

An interview with the dissident poet and essayist Kirill Medvedev about a new Russian left.

  • Emma Goldhammer

The End of the Ceasefire (The End of the Objectivist School?)

  • Kirill Medvedev

Against Conceptualism

Conceptualism aims to eliminiate affect from poetry. There are emotional and political consequences.

  • Calvin Bedient

Celebrity Dream Poems

  • Noah Falck

Mound

  • Christopher Phelps

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From the Keep

  • Cherry Pickman

1776

  • Claire Sylvester Smith

Rough Day

  • Ed Skoog

The Varieties of Blackness

An interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

  • Aaron Bady

Black in Time

Kiese Laymon's Novel Explores the Messy Complexity of Race in America

  • Lucy McKeon

Burrow

  • Margaret Ross

Assisted Living

  • Margaret Ross

There Are Two Pools You May Drink From

Winner of the Aura Estrada Short Story Contest

  • Kerry-Lee Powell

Same-Day Resolution

 

  • Trey Moody

Divide and Conquer Algorithm for the Pacifist

  • Jeff Encke

The Not-Saying

On the renunciation of poetry.

  • Christina Davis

The Greater Gatsby

Fitzgerald's novel is overrated, but the new film version deserves more credit than it has received.

  • Alan A. Stone

To Be a God

  • Justin Boening

Can Liberals Get a Witness?

The left’s separation from the churches means continuing estrangement from middle America.

  • Claude S. Fischer

Light of the World

Remembering Ficre Ghebreyesus.

  • Elizabeth Alexander

Pink Reef

Introduction by Timothy Donnelly

  • Robert Fernandez

Song of Upbringing

  • Chuya Nakahara

Poem for Four Years

  • Danniel Schoonebeek
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