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

Lucho

A short story.

  • Patricia Engel

Whole Sight

On artistic passion.

  • Charles Johnson

Brazil’s Dreamer

The disenchantment and re-enchantment of Chico Buarque.

  • Scott Saul

Nabokov’s Gift

A writer's legacy.

  • Roger Boylan

Found in Translation

On César Aira, Roberto Bolaño, and Hispanic-American writing.

  • Aura Estrada

A Care in the World

Away From Her directed by Sarah Polley.

  • Alan A. Stone

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In Search of John Ashbery

Beyond the same old pipings.

  • Forrest Gander

Prisoners’ Poems

Captivity by Laurie Sheck.

  • G.C. Waldrep

Light and Twilight

The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire.

  • Karen Volkman

Spit

  • Christine Garren

The Folded Message

  • Christine Garren

The Greenness of Grass Is a Positive Quality

  • Samuel Amadon

The Prince of Rivers

  • Craig Morgan Teicher

Lullaby

  • Carrie Robb

Millions of Strange Shadows on You Tend

—Shakespeare, sonnet 53

  • Calvin Bedient

This book can’t be sung

(Reading Walden)

  • Brian Teare

The very air

(Faith Reason)

  • Brian Teare

Poet’s Sampler: Ewa Chrusciel

  • Ewa Chrusciel
  • Jorie Graham

In Search of the Common Good

The Catholic roots of American Liberalism

  • Lew Daly

Transitory Cities

Winner of the 14th Annual Boston Review Short Story Contest

  • Padma Viswanathan

Metamorphosis

Rosamond Purcell's Natural History

  • John Crowley

Living Together

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing

  • Alan A. Stone

Gravity and Fire

The Outernationale by Peter Gizzi.

  • John Palattella

Oracle

The Queen's Dissertion by Carol Frost.

  • Garth Greenwell
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