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

Exchange Rate

Poetry in translation takes off.

  • Jordan Davis

Ever was

  • Tom Thompson

Big Talkers

Frederick Seidel’s and Bernadette Mayer’s poetic monologues.

  • Raymond McDaniel

Double Gesture

Poetry in translation rarely gets much of a hearing in America, and Swedish poetry fares even worse.

  • Robert Archambeau

Canceled

Winner of Boston Review’s sixteenth annual short story contest.

  • Jessica Treglia

Freedom

They were free to leave The Prison, but they had nowhere to go. Every country on earth refused to accept them. 

  • Amy Waldman

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Between the Devil and the Deep Sea

When my father was dying, he wanted me to read him Lamentations and Ezekiel. 

  • Colin Dayan

Sound Barrier

Joe Wright’s The Soloist.

  • Alan A. Stone

Review: The Winter Sun

By Fanny Howe.

  • Amelia Klein

Review: Assorted Poems

By Susan Wheeler.

  • Michael Lindgren

Review: Corinna, A-Maying the Apocalypse

By Darcie Dennigan.

  • Raymond McDaniel

Review: The Scattered Papers of Penelope

By Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke.

  • Keith Taylor

Review: My Soviet Union

By Michael Dumanis.

  • Andy Frazee

Review: King of a Hundred Horsemen

By Marie Étienne.

  • Lindsay Turner

Review: Field Folly Snow

By Cecily Parks.

  • Cherry Pickman

Review: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time

By Marie Howe.

  • Tara Neelakantappa Safronoff

Review: The Age of Huts

By Ron Silliman.

  • Rob Schlegel

Review: Orpheus in the Bronx

By Reginald Shepherd.

  • Robert Schnall

What so ever you

  • Michele Glazer

Little Evidence of the Bee’s

  • Zach Savich

The Adult Longeing Guide

  • Zach Savich

Road Rising Into Deep Grass

  • Gretchen Steele Pratt

I Eat My Television

  • Robert Murdock

Little Idea

  • Michael Loughran
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