Getting On With It
By Tess Taylor
Art as Civic Repair
Throughout his political career, Joe Biden has frequently invoked his favorite poet, Seamus Heaney. Accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Biden quoted Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy,” an adaptation of Sophocles’ play Philoctetes,which posits that “once in a lifetime / the longed-for tidal wave / of justice can rise up / and hope and history rhyme.” Months later, after the brutal attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden assumed office under the watch of fifteen thousand members of the National Guard. He did not quote Heaney, but he did suggest that his presidency might usher in one such rhyming moment, and he promised to end “our uncivil war.”