The New Yorker: Poetry Podcast

Episode: Bruce Smith Reads Mary Ruefle
Date: September 30, 2025
Host: Kevin Young (Poetry Editor, The New Yorker)
Guest: Bruce Smith (Poet, author of "Hungry Ghost")

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Kevin Young welcomes acclaimed poet Bruce Smith for a deeply insightful exchange about poetry, ancestry, ritual, and the interplay between art and sports. Bruce reads Mary Ruefle’s “Open Letter to My Ancestors,” reflecting on its emotional complexity, humor, and mysterious quality, and then shares his own poem “The Game,” delving into boyhood, masculinity, and the metaphysics of America’s pastime. Their conversation is filled with warmth, wit, literary allusions, and mutual respect.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mary Ruefle’s “Open Letter to My Ancestors”

Reading: [01:43] – [03:25]

• Choice & Appeal:

  • Bruce chose Ruefle’s poem for its "strange energy" and a kind of "domestic mysticism," citing its blend of surprise, humor, and a blur between past and present ([01:10]).
  • He praises her capacity for "bewilderment and delight" and how she employs surprise both structurally and emotionally ([05:52]).

• Letter as Form and Metaphor:

  • The poem’s open letter form opens a pathway for intimacy and distance at the same time:

    “The letter form is a way to be able to have an ‘I—you’ exchange, even if it's with the ancestors. And also a way to... journey into the interior.” — Bruce Smith [04:17]

• Sense of Journey and Inheritance:

  • The voyage in the poem is interpreted as life’s journey, with the "valise" and "bag of potatoes" standing in as metaphors for what’s truly valuable across generations ([04:41], [05:52]).
  • The poem explores living through one’s ancestors and the absurdity and gratitude that comes with it.

• Technique & Tone:

  • The lack of punctuation in the poem "fuses or confuses... the ancestral past and the sort of comic immediate" ([10:00]).
  • Comic images—like walking around the house in a green clay mask—contrast with profound existential themes.

• Mystery in Poetry:

  • Both Smith and Young discuss the necessity and art of leaving mysteries unresolved in a poem, what Smith calls “a blue note”:

    “Letting a mystery be a mystery in a poem... Now that's real art.” — Kevin Young [13:42]
    “That last note... It is the blue note for Mary Ruefle there.” — Bruce Smith [14:35]

• Memorable Passage:

  • Young highlights Ruefle’s summing-up of ancestral life as "one person with a very long life. It's better that way. Blood, tears, violence, hate, ashes, everything. The mad blue terror of dying, of having to learn another language." ([08:17])
  • The closing image—"where even a recluse bird must fly"—is described as mysterious, fugue-like, and a characteristic leap beyond resolution ([11:28], [11:52]).

  “You can't look directly into the burning bush, you know, you have to turn your face away. And the green clay mask does that work comically and wonderfully...” — Bruce Smith [15:31]

Notable Quotes

• “Maybe you have to start with a green clay mask... If you're approaching the mystery, maybe you have to approach it that way. You can't approach the Sphinx from the rear, as someone once said.” — Bruce Smith [13:42]
• “There's a ritual quality: you gotta put on a mask to see the mystery. Like you must come cloaked.” — Kevin Young [15:09]

2. Bruce Smith’s Poem: “The Game”

Introduction/Backstory: [17:16] – [19:01]
Reading: [19:05] – [21:22]

• Inspiration & Occasion:
  • The poem reflects on a minor league baseball game attended with Nigerian writer Isi Osondu and his son, exploring the rituals and confusions of American masculinity and the challenge of explaining baseball customs ([17:26]).
  • Rooted in personal experience, including an anecdote about a child’s inadvertent blending of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Take Me Out to the Christ” ([17:26]).
• Art & Athletics, Success & Failure:
  • The poem contrasts the "artist" and "athlete," pondering how both fields are about repeated failure and the quest for "glory":

    "[B]oth the art of the athlete and that skill... it's about failing and failing again... Isn't that what the artist does as well?" — Bruce Smith [21:56]

• Masculinity & Identity:
  • The poem is attentive to the rituals of becoming a man but includes lines about being "always a girl as I awe and ooh," complicating any easy binary ([24:33]).
  • Clutching the ticket stub at the end is a symbol for searching for proof, belonging, and memory in a world of confusion.
• Music, Mystery, & Infinity:
  • Kevin Young highlights the poem’s “internal rhyme,” repetition of “fail and fail and fail,” its attention to sound, and the spatial/temporal infinity of baseball ([22:44], [26:29]).
  • A digression about Yogi Berra leads to humor and shared baseball memories.

Notable Quotes

• “There's a box and a zone in the air and the dirt I must own to find my way out or know where it is I sit. I keep my ticket stub in my fist.” — Bruce Smith, reading “The Game” [19:05]
• “You could have an infinitely long plate appearance by fouling off the pitches. So there could be infinity, or the game could keep on going in a tied score.” — Bruce Smith [27:44]

3. Personal Annotations, Baseball Lore, and Poetic Tradition

Discussion: [30:32] – [36:01]

• Artist as Creep?
  • Smith jokes about his Phillies allegiance and pokes fun at Yankee fans, bringing levity to the conversation ([30:32]).
  • “I played center. I caught and I played third. And it was because I had no real position that I was failed and failed to hit the curve.” — Bruce Smith [31:30]
• Baseball, Memory, and Myth:
  • Both poets reminisce about legendary players (Clemente, Mays, Yogi) and the mythmaking of fandom ([35:43]).
  • Young shares childhood memories of Little League in Syracuse and the iconic Kansas City Royals ([35:24]).
  • Bruce Smith recalls reading poetry on the team bus: “I was reading the Norton anthology on the bus. I think that got me sent home.” ([32:09])
• The Meditative Game:
  • Baseball’s languor and scope are described as uniquely suited to the poetic imagination, as well as the meditative tendencies of both host and guest ([32:44]).

4. On Smith’s New Book, “Hungry Ghost”

Discussion: [37:15] – [38:42]

• Structure & Themes:
  • Many new poems are ten lines long, ranging from elegy for Prince to observations on American and personal longing.
• Title’s Origin:
  • “Hungry Ghost” derives from the Buddhist concept—spirits reborn for their “overly desirous” lives, always hungry and unsatisfied. Smith links this metaphorically to contemporary societal excess.
  • “Apparently, there are 36 kinds of hungry ghosts, I learned. But if you steal food from the temple in your life, you'll come back with a tiny mouth and a big belly, always looking for food. So it spoke to our nation under Trump, in a way, to me.” — Bruce Smith [38:02]

Most Memorable Moments

• The playful teasing about baseball teams and the tradition of poets as baseball fans (Moore, Hall), with sly jabs at Yankees fans ([30:32]).
• Ruefle’s poetry described as “bewilderment and delight,” conclusion as a “blue note,” and the necessity of approaching poetic mystery obliquely.
• Kevin Young’s story of receiving his first poetry acceptance from Bruce Smith—a testament to the generational continuum of mentorship in poetry ([39:03]).
• The ballgame as a metaphor for "infinity," “failure,” "sacrifice," and the ways we try—and sometimes need—to find evidence for where we've been:

  “That simple act of clutching his ticket stub is a way to at least have some evidence from whatever happened in this nine innings.” — Bruce Smith [25:15]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening & Guest Introduction: [00:05] – [00:58]
• On Mary Ruefle’s “Open Letter to My Ancestors” / Reading: [01:00] – [03:25]
• Discussion of Ruefle’s Poem: [03:25] – [16:26]
• On Open Letter Form & Poems as Journeys: [04:14] – [06:46]
• Mystery in Poetry: [12:35] – [14:35]
• Break / Sponsor Messages: [16:32] – [17:13]
• On Smith's “The Game” / Context: [17:16] – [19:01]
• Reading of “The Game”: [19:05] – [21:22]
• Dialogue on Art, Athletics, and Masculinity: [21:56] – [28:50]
• Baseball as Myth, Memory: [29:54] – [37:08]
• On “Hungry Ghost,” Prince, and Buddhist inspiration: [37:15] – [38:42]
• Closing / Personal Reminiscences: [39:01] – [39:54]

Language & Tone

• The conversation is inviting, intellectual, and warm—filled with literary digression, humor, and insight.
• Both host and guest reflect deeply but keep the discussion accessible and sprinkled with anecdotes, keeping the spirit of conversation alive.
• Quotations from both poems and the speakers exemplify a clear reverence for both poetry’s seriousness and its delight in play.

For listeners and readers alike, this episode invites an appreciation for poetic inheritance, the strangeness of ritual (in both family and sport), and the fruitful overlap between comic and profound. Smith and Young offer attentive readings, weave personal histories into analysis, and inspire with their mutual curiosity and respect for the inexplicable in poetry and life.