David Duchovny on his new book of poetry influenced by his life and career

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Actor, writer, musician, and now poet.

David Duchovny, known to audiences for his roles in “Californication” and “The X-Files,” turns his attention to something more intimate, poems that wrestle with love, loss, memory, and the passing of time. It’s a meditation on what it means to grow older, to look back, and to wonder what still lies ahead.

I spoke with him recently about his book “About Time.”

David Duchovny, welcome to the “News Hour.”

David Duchovny, Author, “About Time”: Thank you for having me.

Geoff Bennett: I couldn’t help but laugh at the way you open your book. You write: “I know what you’re thinking, just what the world needs now, a bunch of poems from an actor.”

What drew you to poetry at this point in your career?

David Duchovny: Well, I have been writing poems my whole life, really, and just stuffing them in drawers. And so this collection really represents probably at least 20, 25 years of just writing poems when they come to me.

The preponderance of the poems are more recent, but there’s some old ones in there. So it’s just something that I have always done and been interested in.

Geoff Bennett: And do you also say that: “Poetry is not useful, and that’s exactly why we need it?”

Why?

David Duchovny: Well, this idea of use or utility, it’s interesting to me, and especially educationally.

We want to get educated to be able to work, to have a job of some kind. But we have kind of, which is great, and it’s necessary. But we have lost sight of educating a mind, how to think, or a soul, how to feel. And the disciplines like English literature, I feel, and philosophy are the disciplines that educate the soul.

So that’s not useful. That’s not considered useful anymore to learn how to think.

Geoff Bennett: Yes. And poetry often asks so much more of a reader, slowness, attention. You find utility in that?

David Duchovny: I find mystery in words. I find mystery in expression.

And the more mysterious you can make your words, not intentionally, but just because it’s so difficult to put your finger on the deepest truths and the deepest emotions that we have, then the truer that it is.

So, the mystery that you’re talking about, I think, is inherent in the poetic enterprise, which is, how do I say what can’t be said?

Geoff Bennett: What are the central themes that tie this book of poetry together?

David Duchovny: Like I said, they encompass like 20 years of my life, so there’s the death of parents. It’s not going to sound like a real joyride when I go over it, I think, obviously, the death of my father, my — the death of my mother as well, the birth of my kids, the raising of my kids, and then, yes life, death, birth, all the big-ticket items, you know?

Geoff Bennett: Twenty-five years, is there a specific poem that feels most personal to you?

David Duchovny: I mean, they’re all very personal, but that — to me, that’s not — the allure is not what is personal to me.

What — the allure of writing a good poem is, how can I make what’s personal to me personal to you? How can I write something so personal objectively enough so that you feel like it’s about you? There are poems that are more — in this collection, more tied to times in my life maybe that are — that are — feel more emotional to me, like the birth of my children or when they were young and trying to figure out, how do I teach them, how do I reach them, how do I raise them?

There’s “Carbon Canyon,” that poem which I like very much, which is where I’m walking with my daughter, who’s about 3 or 4 years old, and we come across a carcass of a field mouse, and start talking about life and death. Being a young father, I think, oh, this is a great opportunity for me to teach her about death and impermanence and all those things.

And I start to, but she doesn’t see it that way. And then, as I lean down further, I see all these ants going in and out of the carcass. And it’s terrifying to me. It’s gross that now that I’m in this conversation and now I have got to tell her about the way we’re all eaten and worm food.

And it’s just — it’s too much, I know. And so I go to take her away from the spectacle of it. And the end of the poem goes, she says: “Daddy, look, the ants, there’s so many of them.”

I say: “‘Yes, I see. Maybe we should let the mouse sleep, let her sleep.’ I take her hand to lead her, though I don’t know where. I know I am blind and unprepared, a child leading a child. And the little one stops and smiles and points back to the carnage: ‘No, the ants, daddy, the ants. Look how much they love her.'”

Geoff Bennett: How does your creative process in writing poetry differ from writing novels or music, which you have done, screenplays, even acting?

David Duchovny: The poems, I mean — ideas come from anywhere, and they kind of announce themselves.

And it’s up to the maker to figure out what’s the form, what’s the best form for that thing, that idea, that feeling that came. So that’s something I will ask myself, like some big ideas or like plot ideas, and I’m like, oh, that’s a movie or that’s a novel.

Some smaller ideas are just thoughts or feelings or even a phrase, a turn of phrase that catches me. And I will go, well, that’s a poem or a song. That’s — it’s like a strobe light. It’s just one moment. It’s not an epic poem. It’s not the Iliad or the Odyssey. It’s really just a small shot in the dark.

Geoff Bennett: Having written these poems over the last nearly three decades, what has it taught you about yourself?

David Duchovny: That I keep trying to figure certain things out, I think.

I think, in the introduction, I say a poem is very optimistic, because it’s setting out to say something that can’t be said and hoping that maybe this time I’m going to say it right. So, I think I remain kind of committed to seeking and committed to try to say things right or to try to figure out myself or the world around me.

So I would say that maybe I don’t appear to be the greatest optimist in the way I present myself, but I would say that the fact that I continue to write poetry or believe in it is optimistic.

Geoff Bennett: The book is “About Time” by David Duchovny.

Thanks so much for speaking with us. We appreciate it.

David Duchovny: I appreciate it. Thank you.