Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.A scary season looms; poems can steel the spirit, or offer a distraction. Our writers and editors offer nine selections for exactly those purposes. Store them in your heart’s cellar, and retrieve as needed.

The United States has passed a terrible milestone: 250,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. But with the holidays approaching and the spread worse than ever, the situation could become even more dire. Now is the time to have hard conversations about Thanksgiving, even though it will be awkward.On this episode of the Social Distance podcast, James Hamblin and Katherine Wells answer listener questions about the holidays and give advice on how to cancel plans.

The good news is that President Donald Trump’s attempts to defy the results of the election and remain in office keep falling flat. In court after court, judges have ruled against the Trump campaign and tossed out its lawsuits. Today, Georgia certified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the state’s presidential electors, after a federal judge yesterday rejected a prominent conservative lawyer’s suit seeking to block certification.

Photographs by Michael SchmellingCollab day at Clubhouse Beverly Hills was scheduled to start at 2 p.m., but that time came and went and the mansion was still as sleepy as a college dorm on Saturday morning. In one of the house’s four living rooms, an enormous oil painting of George Washington loomed over a pale leather couch. A whiteboard listed ideas for future TikTok videos: shooting range, wine tasting, go-karts, Joshua Tree.

During a period of deep grief years ago, the writer Rosie Schaap opened a copy of the collected works of William Blake. The experience of reading his poem “Auguries of Innocence,” she recalled, “lit a little votive in the small, dark chapel of loss, by whose light I started to see a way through.”Like Schaap, many people have found the words to express their loss in literature.