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

Autobiography

  • Samuel Menashe

Neglect

  • Priscilla Becker

Attack Attack

  • Mark McKee

Poet’s Sampler: Stephen Sturgeon

  • Stephen Sturgeon
  • Philip Nikolayev

Microreview: Paul Guest, Exit Interview

Poems that temper violence with Whitmanesque generosity.

  • Chris Tonelli

Microreview: Matthew Zapruder, The Pajamaist

  • Kathleen Rooney

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Unfinished Story

On Holocaust by Charles Reznikoff.

  • Kathryn Crim

Microreview: Paisley Rekdal, The Invention of the Kaleidoscope

  • Victoria Chang

Microreview: Liam Rector, The Executive Director of the Fallen World

The last collection before the poet's suicide. 

  • Robert Schnall

All That Is Given

Hannah Arendt on being Jewish.

  • Vivian Gornick

Mugger and Mouse Get Married

A story story. 

  • Michael Agresta

Out of Exile

Notes on Georgi Gospodinov and Bulgarian literature.

  • Dimiter Kenarov

A Fiendish Mood

The mid-century novels of "the other Elizabeth Taylor"

  • Neel Mukherjee

Modern Hell

Sidney Lumets's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

  • Alan A. Stone

Small Packages

Emblems of Desire: Selections from the Délie of Maurice Scève.

  • Jennifer Grotz

Neither Settled Nor Easy

One Big Self: An Investigation by C.D. Wright.

  • Alan Gilbert

To Reap the Field

  • Tomaž Šalamun

You Are at Home Here

  • Tomaž Šalamun

Let’s

  • Martha Zweig

Overturn

for Philip

  • Martha Zweig

The Lieutenant, Returned

  • Iain Haley Pollock

Tradition, With Industry

  • Geoff Bouvier

Conifers

  • Mark Bibbins

The Drawing

  • Sabrina Orah Mark
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