2019 Poetry & Short Story Contests | Boston Review

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Music

Literature & Culture, Race

Aretha Franklin’s Soul

‘Amazing Grace,’ the long-lost film of Franklin’s gospel album, offers a lesson in the deep connections between gospel and soul music.

Ed Pavlić

Race

What Happened to Kanye West?

Kanye represents what happens when the liberties of artistic genius are confused for political insight.

Christopher Lebron

Literature & Culture

Lenny Boy

A personal essay on family, death, and the healing power of music.

Peter E. Gordon

Literature & Culture, Race

Janelle Monáe for President

What Afrofuturism can teach us about surviving Trump.

Christopher Lebron

Education & Opportunity

Leaving Behind the Yellow Submarine

Mentorship is how the humanities justify themselves.

Jo Guldi

Literature & Culture

Hashpipe of the Vanities

Overestimating the counterculture of the 1960s

Hal Stucker

Literature & Culture

A Good, Bad, Hard, Easy Life

A new collection of Lead Belly's recordings.

Dave Byrne

Literature & Culture

Dedicated to the Kings of Rhythm and Blues

After years of obscurity, the “5” Royales are finally getting their due.

Colin Fleming

Literature & Culture

I Am Nick Drake Now

Drake was an artist so out of step with his own time that he came to be in lockstep with things not bound by time.

Colin Fleming

Literature & Culture, War & Security

Jim Morrison, Where the Bombs Don’t Fly

American rock stars have the same black dots as French poets, Italian artists, Polish composers, and flamboyant British novelists.

Jackson Bliss

Literature & Culture, Science & Nature

Ground Down to Molasses

The Making of an American Folk Song

Dave Byrne

Literature & Culture, Race

Gangsta Folk

If gangsta rap lyrics are evidence of criminality, what are we to make of gruesome murders depicted in many folk and country songs?

Simon Waxman

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