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Will Hope And History Rhyme For Joe Biden?

Biden Has Quoted One Poem at the Biggest Moments Of His Career. What Does This Tell Us About The Man?

Brian Deines
5 min readNov 6, 2020

In the biggest speeches of Joe Biden’s political career — at the biggest moment of the speech — he has quoted one poem, The Cure At Troy.

I find this fascinating. Not in the least because it begs the following question — what can we learn, or already know, about a man if we study his favorite piece of poetry?

Biden accepting the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, citing Heaney. courtesy of wh.gov

The Cure At Troy, The Cure For Us All?

‘The Cure At Troy’ is part of poet Seamus Heaney’s translation of Sophocles’ Ancient Trojan War Poem ‘Philoctetes.’

According to the Nobel website, the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Seamus Heaney “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.”

It’s safe to say that Heaney won the Nobel prize, in no small part, for having written these four stanzas of poetry.

I’m not the first writer to report Joe Biden likes to quote Heaney. And by now, it’s well known…

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Brian Deines
Brian Deines

Written by Brian Deines

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