Acclaimed author, actor, and singer-songwriter David Duchovny returns to the podcast to discuss ABOUT TIME, a deeply personal, existential, and insightful debut poetry collection. They dive into the paradox of poetry as both “useless” and deeply essential, exploring its power to connect, surprise, and give voice to grief, memory, and love. David shares moving poems about his late father and beloved dog, reflecting on loss, the beauty of language, and why poetry still matters in a world obsessed with utility.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome back on Totally Booked. David, thank you so much here to talk about About Time your poetry collection.

Congratulations. 

David: Thanks for having me on again.  My pleasure. 

Zibby: Oh, it's my pleasure. Okay. Your whole argument in the beginning of this book is that poetry is so unnecessary. Why read it, why write it? And yet it's essential. Can you explain that a little bit? 

David: Well, I mean, it gets into the whole argument about, you know, what is.

What, what is the use of poetry, you know? And I think that one of the main draws for me. Is that it's pretty useless. I mean, it's a, it's, it's, it's really just a form of expression that's kind of antiquated. Uh, nobody reads it anymore. A, a great poet once said, the best thing about poetry is you can't get rich doing it.

You know? So there's really no, there's no other motives, you know? There's no motive. There's no political motive, you know, which I think has infected maybe the wrong word, but it's infected a lot of our art over the past 10, 20 years is like, well, what is it saying politically? And that's not an issue with poetry or, or, it has never, it's not, it's not, everything is political in some sense because it's talking about the world, but not, you can't really get into specifics in poetry, um, that way.

So there's a certain kind of lack of agenda that I like about it, or I, I hope that I, that, that I can maintain in it, you know what I mean? So, uh, I think all those things, the fact that nobody reads it great. Um,.. 

Zibby: I mean, I, I read it, but it's okay. 

David: I can't get rich at it. Great. It seems useless. Fantastic. Uh, so, so because it's useless or doesn't, doesn't have an overt political agenda, then, you know, it's, it becomes about just basic existence and language and communication and those kinds of things, uh, for me.

Zibby: And what does it do for you to write poetry? 

David: I don't know. It's like when I'm, when I'm involved in, when I have an idea for a poem or I start to write a poem. It's really like a puzzle, you know, because usually I just have an image to start with or a thought, and then the poem becomes an unpacking of that thought over and over, and the thought changes over the different unpackings of it or the image uh, for some reason, if I have it, I'm going to do it the honor of thinking that it came there for a reason and I gotta figure out what that reason is. So I unpack the image and I'm always surprised, and I think that's the nice thing about. For me about writing poetry is, uh, you know, I start with this one thing in mind with this phrase or this image, or this idea, and then the surprise comes, uh, as I unpack it, as I, as I try to write around it, you know, a lot of poems are about the inability of me to say it.

Get at it. So as I take different stabs at it throughout the poem, I'm surprised. 

Zibby: Hmm. So if poetry really has no use and you enjoy the fact that it's not widely read, why publish it at all? 

David: Well, roses have no use. People love them. There's many things in this world. Behold, the lilies of the field, they foil not, neither do they spin.

It's what's our most ancient wisdom is about things that have no use at all. I think we get. We get wrapped up in what is the use of things in this culture because we're, you know, a capitalist culture or whatever, you know, what, what is the use of it? How can this make money? How can this, how can this do anything out there in the world when in fact, you know, most of the things, if we were honest also, of the things in our lives that really feed us are, are not useful.

They're beautiful. 

Zibby: Well, the, the usefulness is in touching our emotions, not anything else. But if you argue that there's no use to bringing joy and connection to people, then, I guess, but isn't that the most useful thing you could provide? 

David: Yeah. I don't know if it's joy, but connection. Sure. Um, even if it's in connection of like, oh, this is impossible to do.

Mm-hmm. You know what we're trying here, we're trying to put words. Poetry is often about itself. You know about the, the act of trying to speak and, you know, it really calls attention to this thing called language that we all think means the same thing to us, but it doesn't. We, you know, with these words are just approximations that a poem for me is throwing all these different kinds of words at things or breaking words up from their usual places that we usually think of them in.

The way we usually say them and shedding new light, you know, on the fact that it's kind of artifice and it's all imprecise. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

David: And trying to get back to kind of like, oh, let's try to be precise here. And so, yeah, it's connection for sure. Joy. Yeah. It can be joy. 'cause I think connection is joyous. 

Zibby: Okay.

Can I read a couple of them and see the backstory? Hear the backstory? 

David: If you have to. 

Zibby: Maybe, or a passage from one of them is, am I embarrassing you? 

David: Yeah, you can read whatever you want. I'm just being, I'm just being, you know.

Zibby: Okay, let's read something from dead seven. I don't need an occasion to think of my father occasionally dead now. Seven years better than nothing. I hope waits for him. An afterlife, a rebirth is it? If so, then is the old man young again and death. A seven years dead boy. Growing steadily deadly as he watches me in life grow. Seven years learning the netherworld ropes. Still a child by turns, wide-eyed and suen as he crawls, walks, runs into the walls of his newly unlimited understanding, his 75 years or so on Earth, useless except as a dream of power, a moderately successful campaign of tiny plastic soldiers. Who is his mentor there who reminds him, who comforts him and teaches him the otherworldly equivalent of fishing or algebra or empathy for the dead living all around him, does he sit dead, little head in, little dead, hands on the curb, lonely and abandoned.

He who held my hands and taught and did not teach me so many things of nature. And that nature. I age like a tree, each new ring, an orbiting armor round, an empty marrow. The things I did not learn closed off at the center of my being unreachable of interest only to those who would chop me down to see what I might deliver coldly from another age.

Oh, so you see here, this was the problem right here. The worm at the root, the uneven ring. I'm almost done, I promise. Older now than he and death. I see him confused reaching for my studying arm as a dead branch, perjures life in the wind. His language, his access to our symbols impenetrable, the dead tongue mute.

My need for him transcribed into his imagined need for me. My inarticulate want his full fathom. 5, 6, 7. Now going on eight. My sweet Suken boy calls to me. I am here. I respond and ready and of absolutely no use. 

David: Yeah. 

Zibby: That's so, it's so emotional. 

David: Yeah. 

Zibby: I mean, it's a way of trying to understand the loss of someone you love so much, which of course all of us are trying to do every day with various people.

Tell me about writing this poem. 

David: Well, clearly it was on, I think, the seventh anniversary of my dad, so that's what, a while ago already, just 15 years ago. That poem's probably 15 years old. Yeah. If he'd died in 2003, I think he did, or four, I think three. Yeah, that would be sometime 2010. And um, I guess I just had that thought on an anniversary, like oh, seven years.

And then this impossible notion of, well, what if, what if we can, what if we are born again, but we're not here, we're born into some other consciousness of some realm of death where, where we grow, where it's not just the end of something. And then kind of, I guess I'm, I'm trying to think back, but I think I was excited by this idea of him being younger than me and me being, me being his mentor or his father in some way and, and feeling, yes, feeling for his confusion, you know, feeling as, as one feels for the confusion of one's own children, and that it, it moves me as I speak. So I'm sure it moved me back then to kind of pursue it further. Um, what, what would be those things that a living dead person, you know, not, not, not our movie versions of Living Dead, not the last of us, or you know, the walking Dead or whatever, but more of a consciousness, less of a spectacle. Um, so just, and then, you know, I think it becomes like unclear who I'm talking about, what I'm talking about, me as his son or him as my son. And it's really forging, I think it's me trying to forge or renew a relationship with him now that he's gone.

That's why at the end it's very sad that I'm ready finally, probably because I've been a father, I'm ready finally to have a connection with him and to help him. But, um, it's too late. I'm of absolutely no use, you know, so 'cause dead. So I, I guess that's where that poem comes from. If I'm, if I'm too explicated, I think it's.

I think it's pretty understandable. 

Zibby: What do you think happens? Do you, are you someone who like talks to your dad or says like, here's what I'm working on with my child? Or what do you think? 

David: Oh, I mean, I think they live on, but I think they live on, in our, in our minds, you know, in our, our hearts or souls in some way.

I don't think any, I don't think anything continues, but it does continue if we continue. He's alive now. We talk about him. He's alive. Um. He's here. We talking about him. He's here. He's not here in the way he was when he was alive, but he's here. So that's a certain kind of a continuation of life. So as long as we continue to speak, as long as I continue to speak of him or write about him or address him in my mind in some way. Then he has a certain kind of life, you know? And then I, you know, I also want him to be happy with the way I talk about if I'm going to, you know, write a poem about him. I don't wanna lie about anything, you know, I, I want it to be this. I'm trying again, you know, imprecisely using these words that I'm giving to try and talk about a state of being that doesn't really exist, you know, trying to get at it.

So I don't want, I, I, I would never want him to be embarrassed, and I also don't want to sugarcoat everything. 

Zibby: What was, it's none of my business. But what was your relationship with him like? 

David: Well, my, my parents divorced when I was, uh, 11. So my relationship after the age of 11 was attenuated. Is that the word?

It was, it was less, less intense than when I was a kid, and I. I am, I will always miss that. And that's the kind of absolutely no use thing. It's like didn't get, didn't get them, didn't get it. Like you don't get to have, you know, that's the other thing. It's like things happen. Things happen in life and you don't get to do 'em over, and you don't get to not have them happen, but you do get to try to figure out what they are, and you do get to figure out how you're gonna live with it.

So this, in a way, would be my way of trying to live with the fact that. We didn't have the kind of father son relationship that in my mind I wanted, or looking back, I would've wanted, but that doesn't mean we don't have a relationship. And that doesn't mean, and his death mean, doesn't mean we don't have a relationship either.

You know, like you could try to end this relationship through divorce or death or whatever. But a father and a son are always have a relationship, a mother and a daughter. Cross sex is through a father or daughter, mother and a son. You know, those relationships never end. And it's called comfort, you know, if you lose a child to say that you still have a relationship.

But it's true, you know, and luckily I haven't had that. You know, to me that's, that's, that's the most, um, terrifying thing to confront in life, period. Is a child predeceased on you. 

Zibby: I went to a funeral of a friend this week who's was only in her early forties, and her dad got up and kissed her casket and was like, how am I supposed to eulogize my daughter. This isn't the way it was supposed to be. It's just, oh, I just, I keep replaying it. It's just so sad. I mean, for every parent, I'm a parent. You're a parent. 

David: Yeah. 

Zibby: Anyway, terrifying. Back to poetry. So I think we, I think our conversation is an argument for the usefulness of poetry because it. 

David: Are you gonna keep on going this conversation?

Zibby: No, it keeps the conversation going. It opens up, like what would we be talking about if we didn't have the phone? 

David: Sure. I mean, I mean, you know, for me to start the introduction to the, to the poems. That way it, it's a little defensive because again, I'm saying, you know, who needs to hear from an, who needs to hear poems from an actor?

It's the last thing. There's so many pressing, there's so many pressing issues. You know what I I I'm saying you do need to hear poems from that. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

David: I'm anticipating the argument of like, who the fuck cares what this guy is, is feeling something about, um. Or is writing obliquely about rather than a block filled novel that's gonna entertain us on the beach or some, or, you know, his new Amazon series or whatever, you know, entertain us actor, you know, don't, don't, uh, don't make us feel or think really.

Zibby: Hmm. 

David: So don't try to be serious. Don't try to be real, you know, like it's all bullshit, right? So, so there's all these kinds of things that are in my head. I'm anticipating arguments. Clearly, I believe poetry has a, a, a a use, you know, has many uses. But I'm trying to get out in front of, you know, that idea, the, the contrary to that idea, which is, you know, it's nice to have a little poem here and there, but you know, it's not really, doesn't really help me live.

But in my life, you know, poems helped me live and they're like religious texts. I mean, the closest thing. I also like certain religious texts and they're very poetic to me. So for me, I do love novels and I love movies and I love those other forms of writing or, um, adapting writing. But I, I find poetry to be, um, deeply useful.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. Well, it's like a, it's better than a soundbite 'cause it's the complete distillation of a concept. I feel like poetry, and I said this recently, we published a collection of poetry at my publishing house. Like I feel like in this day and age of no attention, poetry should be having like its biggest moment ever.

Right? It's so short. Like read a poem, you'll feel really good about yourself. It takes two seconds. 

David: They're hard, you know, they're hard because they should, they're, they're not, you know. Aside from maybe my, my death of my dog poem in this, they're, they're not, you can read 'em, but they need to be read a few times.

You know, like even for me, something like, I'm not preparing myself, but somebody like Emily Dickinson, deceptively simple. Most stuff is deceptively simple. The words that Jesus speaks deceptively simple. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

David: The, the, the great, you know, uh, rabbi, masters, deceptively simple. They're all poetic. 'cause you, they, you can't say the most profound truths easily.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

David: Or simply, it's too simple and profound to. Just say it clearly. You just can't do it. I mean, you can say all you need is love, and if that's the kind of poems that you like, that's cool, but that's not the kind of poems I'm trying to like, I like it in a song. I don't necessarily want it, I like it as a reminder, but it's not, to me, it's not like the best of poetry can.

Yeah. 

Zibby: Well what about some of your shorter poems like you have? Can I read one more really short though? 

David: You can read them all this. 

Zibby: This is the Dog Dying. I guess I'm just sort of drawn to grief, so sorry, but that's, it's just me. Um, another brick. I put my dog down this morning and cried some mourning the loss of his mute, expressive soul.

This afternoon at work, a blue sky punctuated only by disjointed loitering clouds. The world moves on and it's blythe way and doesn't care about a little dog. It's already as if he never existed, but he did. He sure did. 

David: Yeah. 

Zibby: My dog is like right there. This like this got me so much. Oh my gosh. Yeah. 

David: Yeah. A couple things that I'm proud of in that poem, when I came upon that phrase, mute, expressive soul, I thought, yeah, I kind of nailed what a dog is.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. Totally. 

David: And I'm proud of that. And then the, he sure did. I think that came like five minutes. I think the poem just kind of came out and I put it away and then five minutes later, I think I went back to He sure did. And that there's something childish about it. You know, there's something young about that.

Like, you know, something boyish about Yeah, he sure did. You know, um, and it's, and so I like that. I like that button at the end. And yeah, the truth is, you know, obviously the world doesn't care about a little dog. The world doesn't care about a little person, but we humans have a need to care about dogs and people and each other.

And we have a need to say, we existed. We were here, we sure were. We sure were, we were here. So it becomes, you know, mourning for all of us in the future as well. And also, you know, the Marlene in aspect of it is always. It gets everybody, every, not everybody. I don't know what it is about dogs, but we are opened up by them.

Zibby: It's true. Said lunch right before this, my dog came over and I kind of imitated her voice and it came, which I never do. And literally everyone at the table was like, that's not what she would sound like. I'm like, I know it was too Scooby-Doo. I don't even know why I did that, but it's so true. 'cause we all have in our heads, like maybe what the dog would sound like really, like who it really is,.. 

David: What it's thinking or you know, we're, we're constantly kind of.

What do you think? You know, what do you, and then there are those camps that are like, he's just with you because you feed him. And then there are the camps that are like, no, that's real love. This is real, real, like unselfish love. So I prefer to think of it the other way. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

David: You know, 

Zibby: Not just the feed. 

David: They love the food. Sure.

But. They also love us. 

Zibby: Yeah. I mean, I know I think of that sometimes too. People who are mean to their dogs, like, how can you be mean to your dog? But then there are people who are mean to everybody who don't even care about life. So, 

I mean, yeah. 

David: Well, I get frustrated with my dog. Sure. You know, but I, I, I like to think I'm never mean to my dog, but yeah, certainly, you know, and, and Brick was, uh.

Break that dog. That's why I called another brick. That was the name of that dog. So he had a rough, like last couple years and it's frustrating, you know, to take care of a dog that's shitting all over your house and throwing up and yeah, it's basic, basically has dementia, you know, and it's hard to know, you know, when, when to, when to stop the life for, for the animal, you know, just as it's hard for us to know that with people, but we don't really do that in this country. I, I wish that we would, but we don't. 

Zibby: So when's the last time you wrote a poem and what was it about? 

David: I, I added one to that collection, but it was too late. Um, and, uh, I don't know where it is. Lemme see if I can find it. It's on my iPad, which is what I'm talking to you on.

So I don't know if I have it other than, other than on my iPad. I might have it in my notes. I've been working on an album too, so there's a lot of that. I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's another, it's another dead one. 

Zibby: Great. I'm your market. 

David: Yeah. So memory is the language of the dead. So that's the last poem I wrote.

Zibby: Excerpt one line teaser 

David: Memory is the language of the dead. I feel my fluency growing even as brutal. Nce saves from surround sound, storyboards to melody to unheard and your atmosphere. Memory is king of everything. I had visited it in sleep, had my passport stamped by a three-headed dog. Memory is sick with dogs.

Zibby: Good on, oh, that's beautiful. 

David: More dogs. 

Zibby: More dogs, more beauty. 

David: My gosh. So that's gonna be on, I think that's on the Amazon Audible. I, I had it in time to record the, my readings of the poems, but it's not in the actual book, but in the book, a couple of the last three poem of the most recent, God is a changed man is recent.

I say no, he is recent and um, homesick for mystery. Those are all probably the most, most recent and they're towards the end. 

Zibby: This one too, how you ended the whole thing, wonder closes and you cross out closes and right opens and other door opens. You cross out, opens and put closes. 

David: I would just keep surfing.

Zibby: Yeah. 

David: So that's the kind of thing, that's the kind of knowledge I think that. Poetry can give us. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

David: It never, you know, it's, that's what I mean, it's not useful. It's like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that saying, you know, what do you mean? It's like, it's never stopping. It's like it's opening and closing at the same time.

What do you mean? And I just say, yes, that's exactly what I mean. You know, like it's, it's not useful, but it's useful in that it puts you maybe in a state of mind that you recognize. Then there's that connection that you're talking about. 

Zibby: Well, your sort of preemptive defense that the world doesn't need poems by an actor.

The world doesn't really need anything, but.

David: From an actor. 

Zibby: Well, that's not true from any anybody. I mean, from anybody.

David: I mean, it's true. The world doesn't need, you know, it doesn't ..

Zibby: Mean that, that they wanna appreciate it and like it very much. 

David: Yeah, no, I, I. I think sometimes maybe you can appreciate it more.

You know, if, if it has no agenda on you. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

David: It's not trying to convert you religiously, politically anyway. You know, it's just kind of trying to put you in a state of mind that open, it opens and closes at the same time, you know? 

Zibby: Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking your time to talk about, about time with me and to 

David: Well, I thank you again for having me on again.

My pleasure. I love, I love coming on with you, and I love the fact that you're a reader and your, and you're, and you speak about books and you try to speak to people who read, you know, and, and Mau Doubt just had a really interesting article. I don't know if you read it on Sunday. She was talking about like, the statistics aren't, men don't read anymore.

Zibby: Mm. 

David: You know, like readers are women and Maureen was saying, you know, men read are sexy. That's Maureen. And um, there was a picture of James Dean reading a book on the article. But yeah, I mean, I would like everybody to read. I think reading is what makes us human in many ways. And, um, I, I wish that men would read more, you know, and men can write poetry.

You know, it's not, it's not just, I'm not saying women shouldn't read or I'm not making a distinction. I'm just saying I, I want, I want more readers. Um, but I'm afraid it seems like, it looks like because of phones and the way we're living, that people just are out of the habit of reading. And I think if they can get something out of a book.

Even one that says you can't get anything out of it. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

David: Maybe I'll continue to read, you know? 

Zibby: Yeah. I'm on the same, pushing the same cause here. Oh, you're, I know you're, yeah. Yeah. I agree. There's a fundamental empathy you get from reading that you can't get through watching things or oh, literally hearing things or whatever.

So Yeah, I agree. 

David: Literally, you're allowing somebody to take over your mind. 

Zibby: Yeah, I know. I think it's the coolest thing, like, how can you not do this anyway? 

David: Yeah. 

Zibby: All right. Well thank you so much and best of luck with your collection. 

David: I appreciate it. 

Zibby: Okay. Bye. 

David: Thank you. Nice to see you again. 

Zibby: You too.