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

Essential Difference

Translated from the Greek by Cecile Inglessis Margellos and Rika Lesser

  • Kiki Dimoula

Cash for Gold

Before you dashed with me through…

  • Ernest Hilbert

To the White Woman on the Plane Who Doesn’t Understand My Discomfort When She Asks If She Can Touch My Hair

What will you do now…

  • Torrie Valentine

After Paradise Lost

When the evil army comes it is accompanied…

  • Alison Powell

Dewseaville

So much trouble/ floating in the air….

  • Daniel Tiffany

Choosing Love

The Beat That My Heart Skipped by Jacques Audiard.

  • Alan A. Stone

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Toward a Realistic World Heritage List

  • Andrew Blackwell

The Practice of Everyday Life

Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas

  • Christopher Schmidt

American Counterworld

Remembering Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)

  • John Crowley

Forgiving Woody

Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

  • Alan A. Stone

What Would Augustine Do?

The President, Drones, and Just War Theory

  • David Luban

Poetry on the Brink: Reinventing the Lyric

Today’s poetry establishment commands polite respect but hardly enthusiasm and excitement.

  • Marjorie Perloff
with responses from
  • Annie Finch
  • Cathy Park Hong
  • Dan Beachy-Quick
  • Katie Degentesh
  • Robert Archambeau
  • Lytton Smith
  • Noah Eli Gordon
  • Evie Shockley
  • Rebecca Wolff
  • Ange Mlinko
  • Dorothea Lasky
  • Anthony Madrid
  • Sandra Lim
  • Samuel Amadon
  • Matthew Zapruder
  • DeSales Harrison
  • Stephanie Burt
  • Maureen N. McLane

One Bird Behind One Bird

  • Amy King

Purifying Kashmir

Saudi Arabia exports Salafism to the war-torn region

  • Tariq Mir

Protective Balls

  • Scott Withiam

Manifesto for Tumor and Poem

  • Jo Ann Clark

We Make a Thing We Marvel

  • Mario Chard

Knecht with Nature 765-588-1130

  • Rosalie Moffett

Gold Empire

  • Rebecca Hazelton

The Naturalist in the Shower Dwells

  • Franke Varca

Writing About Sex

The Shocking and Thrilling D. A. Powell

  • Stephanie Burt

Eye of the Horse

  • Haines Eason

The Stars in an Alternate Universe

  • Kate Jenkins

Capitalism and the Urban Struggle

An Interview with David Harvey

  • David Harvey
  • David V. Johnson
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