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

Why the Novel Is Necessary but Sometimes Hard to Read

  • Marie Howe

Principles of Uncertainty

  • Cynthia Lowen

Poet’s Sampler: John W. Evans

Introduced by Campbell McGrath

  • John W. Evans
  • Campbell McGrath

The Cure

David Cronenberg’s new film, A Dangerous Method.

  • Alan A. Stone

On Borrowed Time

Urban decline moves to the suburbs

  • Michael Gecan

The Last Time I Saw Junior

A short story. 

  • Dagoberto Gilb

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The Monarch of All

The fantasy world of John Cowper Powys.

  • Roger Boylan

For Love and Money

A review of A Free Life, by Ha Jin.

  • Mythili G. Rao

No Redemption

Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood Paramount Vantage (2007)

  • Alan A. Stone

The Speed of Life

Lilies Without by Laura Kasischke.

  • Stephanie Burt

Seeing Voices

On Hannah Weiner’s Open House.

  • Joyelle McSweeney

The Truth of Things

Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005 by Robert Hass.

  • Katie Peterson

Microreview: Rachel Wetzsteon, Sakura Park

As much an ode to the city as it is a documentation of love and loss.

  • Amy Newlove Schroeder

Microreview: Standing in Line for the Beast, Pain Fantasy

Two collections from Jason Bredle.

  • Charlie Clark

Microreview: Brian Kim Stefans, Kluge

Poems that read like a handbook for the future avant-garde.

  • Noah Eli Gordon

Microreview: Susan Hutton, On the Vanishing of Large Creatures

This debut collection focuses on the fundamental question of history: What part of now will be remembered later?

  • Matthew Thorburn

down salute

  • Raymond McDaniel

onyx arcadia

  • Raymond McDaniel

Contact

  • Linnea Ogden

About Marriage

  • Elisa Gabbert
  • Kathleen Rooney

Poem; or, The Artifacts

  • Dan Beachy-Quick

Bill Brandt

  • Gerard Malanga

Garland

  • Kazim Ali

Sparrow

  • Melissa Kwasny
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