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

Hello Kitty

“Gurlesque poets,” Glenum writes, “put the unabashed quest for female pleasure at the center of their poetics.”

  • BK Fischer

Synecdoche

Kathleen Graber’s, The Eternal City, 

  • Megan Levad

Microreview: Edip Cansever, Dirty August

The first English-language translation of the Turkish poet.

  • Elizabeth Gramm

Microreview: Christian Wiman, Every Riven Thing

Poems where God is a constant presence. 

  • Kate Middleton

Microreview: Samuel Amadon, Like a Sea

Poems that present a world refracted through distracted consciousness.

  • Marina Read Weiss

Microreview: David Morley, Enchantment

The interests of a naturalist combined with Romani heritage.

  • Paul Franz

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Microreview: Anthony McCann, I ♥ Your Fate

Poems whose  nabashed romanticism and faith in simple lyricism remain powerful. 

  • Nate Pritts

Poet’s Sampler: Mark Strand

Over a long and distinguished career, with honors that include a Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. Poet Laureateship, Mark Strand has compiled a body of poems that display a remarkable unity of vision and variety of content.

  • Mark Strand
  • Nicholas Christopher

Hearing

  • Joshua Trotter

The Exile

  • Ben Mazer

Album, c. 1930

  • Marjorie Welish

Dear Crown

  • Michael Hansen

Monody

  • Diana S. Adams

River Caskets

  • Diana S. Adams

The Witch

  • Elizabeth Willis

How to be Happy

The ethics of David Foster Wallace.

  • Leland de la Durantaye

Into the Breach

China Miéville’s other reality.

  • Henry Farrell

Drowned Out

Julie Taymor’s The Tempest

  • Alan A. Stone

You Are Free

Lara had not had the heart to tell the old lady that the bridge was not really made of gold.

  • Danzy Senna

Saving Souls

David Grossman’s article of faith.

  • Vivian Gornick

Guinea Pig

Having been freed from my skin, I can’t exactly find my way back.

  • Charles Johnson

Our Poems, Ourselves

Does autobiography make good poetry?

  • Stephanie Burt

Microreview: Rachel Loden, Dick of the Dead

An investigation into American sexual and political consciousness with Nixon at its center. 

  • Fred Muratori

Microreview: Kate Greenstreet, The Last Four Things

Poems preoccupied with details: the concrete, physical materials of future and past. 

  • Sara Femenella
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