Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, March 5th, 2025.

Today's poem comes from T.S. Eliot, and perhaps it's no surprise that that poem is Ash Wednesday.

Richard Wilbur said about this poem that there's a kind of universal experience of

engagement with it or a relationship to it, that every reader seems to go through the same

process of encountering it at an early age, in adolescence, he says,

and finding it beautiful but baffling.

And then later, perhaps they have the misfortune of encountering it again in an academic setting

where they are forced to dissect it and study it through the lens of analytic essays and accompanied

by, he says, footnotes by the yard. And in doing so, perhaps they learn to talk about the poem,

but he says, not yet to possess it. And then finally comes the moment when one has

lived enough, seen enough, experienced enough of the feelings pertinent to the poem. And then

that day arrives when picking up this difficult poem, once again, we find it suddenly open and moving and there to be experienced.

And in the spirit of that insight, I'll present the poem today without commentary so that it can hopefully be possessed rather than talked about.

I will say by way of further introduction that this poem was published in 1930, but it was

the first major poetic work that Elliot wrote after his 1927 conversion. And as a result, you can

see some definite autobiographical themes. And the language of the poem is heavily influenced by the Church

of England liturgies surrounding Ash Wednesday, including the opening language of turning,

which bears a strong linguistic connection to the action of repentance as well. Here is Ash Wednesday.

Because I do not hope to turn again, because I do not hope, because I do not hope to turn,

desiring this man's gift and that man's scope, I no longer strive to strive towards such

things.

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