Frederick Smock
Frederick Smock is a poet and essayist. He has published four books of poems with Larkspur Press: Gardencourt, The Good Life, Guest House, and The Blue Hour, as well as several nonfiction books.
What he’s reading:
“For a poet, I do not read a great deal of poetry, except on the fly – a poem here, a poem there. But maybe that is the best way to read poetry.
Currently I have three books going. Adam Gopnik’s The Table Comes First is a fascinating history of restaurants and emerging food cultures. I have always loved hotels and restaurants. There are several restaurants in town that I go to frequently enough that my wife refers to them, collectively, as ‘the club.’ Gopnik, a former writer for the New Yorker, combines his love of the table with a fine wit and intelligence.
Erica Jong’s novel Sappho’s Leap I am reading as prelude to a class I’m teaching this summer on the ancient Greek poet Sappho. Two years ago I attended a week’s seminar on Sappho in Washington D.C. at the Center for Hellenic Studies, with the Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy, and I have been besotted with Sappho ever since. Jong’s novel is an imagining of Sappho’s life, of course, since we know next to nothing about her. In fact, Sappho’s entry in the Dictionary of Lesbian Biography is but a blank page, so that readers can project their own visions of her.
And I am reading Donna Leon’s My Venice, a collection of essays on that Italian city. Venice is, for me, the city-I’ve-never-been-to-but-can’t-get-enough-of, and Leon’s perceptions are astute. One day I’ll get there.”