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

Four Poems

  • Jorge Luis Borges
  • Oli Hazzard

Smile on a Jet

  • Andrew Durbin

At the End of Hell

  • Jericho Brown

Era for Abandon

  • Lo Kwa Mei-en

How to Make Love to the Greenhouse

  • Lo Kwa Mei-en

Countee Cullen and the Racial Mountain

The life of the black poet.

  • Major Jackson

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Flesh and Statue

How do we separate David Foster Wallace the person from DFW the icon?

  • Trevor Quirk

The Price of Vengeance

Settling the Cinematic Torture Debate

  • Alan A. Stone

The Cure for Loneliness

To Erich Fromm, humanity was always trading freedom for the comfort of external authority.

  • Vivian Gornick

Hard Money Man

Paul Volcker’s career of public service reads as a history of the last half-century of American money.

  • Jonathan Kirshner

Dance with Me

The Many Partners of Fred Astaire

  • Megan Pugh

Poet’s Sampler: Justin Wymer

  • Justin Wymer
  • Peter Sacks

Looting

Female twists on Sophocles and Dante.

  • Rachel Galvin

Pleasure Principle

I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say by Anthony Madrid.

  • David Gorin

Eighth Stage of Love

  • Laura Van Prooyen

Color Theory

  • Stephanie Burt

Butterfly with Parachute

  • Stephanie Burt

Cinderella

  • Alfred Starr Hamilton

You

  • Malachi Black

Reality Check

  • David Lehman

Electric Fence

  • Tom Healy

The Coast of Apples

  • Lee Upton

Defending Freedom of Conscience and Religion Abroad

The Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom responds to criticism.

  • Katrina Lantos Swett

How It’s Made

Eileen Myles — Snowflake/different streets.

  • Kathleen Rooney
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