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

Acorn Duly Crushed

  • Heather Christle

When the President Is Black

  • Marlys West

Elegy

  • Bruce Bond

Hwan’s Condition

  • James Shea

Exit Ovidian

  • Dean Young

The Mosquito Monocracy

  • Adam O. Davis

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And I Do Desire Your Looking Back

  • ’Annah Sobelman

It Never Goes Away

  • Sophie Cabot Black

Demon Doubt

An interview with Vivian Gornick.

  • Vivian Gornick
  • Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

occasional for hollow bones

  • Victoria Brockmeier

Gone

All we had to do was open up the newspaper to see that girls disappeared and died like stray cats. 

  • Danielle Lazarin

We Laughed, We Cried

Flann O’Brien’s triumph.

  • Roger Boylan

A Different Drum

Tom McCarthy's The Visitor.

  • Alan A. Stone

Over the Last Limit

Resurrecting Vladimir Mayakovsky

  • Marjorie Perloff

Free verse

Counter-Revolution of the Word:The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945–1960.

  • Charles Bernstein

Landmarks

Two collections by Kathleen Jamie.

  • Tess Taylor

Microreview: Rae Armantrout, Next Life

Poetics of dilemma.

  • Thomas Hummel

Microreview: Brenda Coultas, The Marvelous Bones of Time

Poems preoccupied with ephemeral, numinous features of human experience and the concrete objects that bear their residues.

  • Aaron McCollough

Microreview: Carson Cistulli, Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated

Cistulli embraces his status as the bastard child of pop culture and the poetic tradition.

  • Nicholas Bredie

Microreview: César Vallejo, The Complete Poetry

The iconic Peruvian poet.

  • Tanya Larkin

Microreview: Jessica Fisher, Frail-Craft

A book about seeking, though for just what is never wholly clear.

  • Amelia Klein

Fear of the Possible

  • Anna Catone

Baited Sonnet

  • Brian Henry

The Coast of What

  • Brian Henry
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