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
Baghdad’s Blank Slate
The massive development projects the Iraqi government has planned for the city seem designed to wipe it clean of its past memories.
A Good Neighbor
The late Marcel Ophuls made films about the twentieth century’s great crimes—and the trail of guilt they left behind.
The Claims of Close Reading
Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.
Plato and the Poets
The centuries-old debate should be settled: an intellectual world bereft of poetry is a damaged one.
Walking the Tightrope
An interview with Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof about his latest film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
Black Planet
“There is no plot; it’s just Black people living their lives with other Black people on their own planet.”
Post Scripts
My dead mother called me to say she knew she killed me a long time ago but look how well I’m doing now.
Leaving the Party
Death was all around him. Maybe you know what this is like, hearing music overlaid with rain. They stop competing after a while.
Two Poems
Don’t stuff your fingers
in your ears or count the Pentecost.
Don’t ask if that grammar has a rosary
or recipe written in cornrows on her head.
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