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 Increasing Frequency of Black Swans

  • Camille Rankine

Notes from Jonah’s Lecture Series

  • Tanya Olson

How Hard It Is Not to Buy a Tiger

  • Tanya Olson

Good Girls/Bad Girls

  • Judy Smith McDonough

Take the Child

A short story.

  • Jess Row

Man of Principle

The Passions of Arthur Koestler.

  • Roger Boylan

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Kingpin

On Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet.

  • Alan A. Stone

Called Into Being

Charles Bernstein's All the Whiskey in Heaven.
 

  • Richard Deming

Slumming

Daniel Tiffany’s "Infidel Poetics"

  • Joyelle McSweeney

The Other Mother Tongue

On The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets.

  • Michael Scharf

Review: The Arrival

By Daniel Simko.

  • Elizabeth Gramm

Review: Practical Water

By Brenda Hillman.

  • Craig Morgan Teicher

Review: Restoration

By Christina Pugh.

  • Sumita Chakraborty

Review: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables

By Robert Henryson.

  • Dave Lucas

Review: Close Calls with Nonsense

By Stephen Burt.

  • Jason Tandon

Poet’s Sampler: Lynn Xu

  • Lynn Xu
  • Ben Lerner

from Anoikis

  • Christine Garren

After Visiting Hours

  • Leon Weinmann

Crows, Too, Have a Means of Purring

  • Anthony Madrid

They Have Built a Public Fountain

  • Anthony Madrid

The Meadow

  • Tadeusz Dąbrowski

Thou

  • Patty Seyburn

New Year’s Resolution

  • Jennifer Banks

The Pursuit

  • Mark DeCarteret
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