About Time: Poems (Hardcover)
by David Duchovny
This phenomenal actor uses his fame as a platform to bring his thoughts to his fans. The poems are varied and thematically different. He uses imagery and word twists to bring a perspective to life. His poems are obscure and vivid.

My thanks to NetGalley and Akashic Books, Ltd. for an advance copy of collection of poems dealing with time and its many enemies, regret, the past, the future, and what are place has meant to us and others.

I found poetry late in my reading career. After high school even after college. I think it is because poetry has always had the cachet of being difficult. Words have different meanings, poems come in styles like A,B, A,B C, and Z. This is this kind of poem, this is a classic poem. People tend to make things difficult, gatekeeping something that doesn't need gatekeeping. Meanwhile all around is is poetry. Advertising catch phrases, political slogans, song lyrics, rap lyrics and more. All convey emotion, make us feel a certain way. The writer of this work, David Duchovny talks about this in the introduction to his work. How he used to write poems to impress young ladies, it wasn't until writing song lyrics that he saw the power and the mystery that poems could have, and how we need to look for poems to help ourselves find our ways in this world. Which is something I agree with. Why poetry, why now. Why not. About Time: Poems, is written by the multi-talented actor, writer, singer, songwriter and offers views into his world, our world, and the world we wish we could have.

The introduction is very interesting a rundown of what poetry means to the author, and how writing song lyrics and poetry while sounding similar are totally different kinds of beasts. The poems that follow deal with a variety of subjects close to all of us. Walking with his child in the woods, and seeing a dead animal. Dealing with the death of his father in a few works. Dealing with family problems, divorce, detachment, divides, even a bit of jealousy. There are a few poems looking back at a world that seemed bright and full of promise, to a future with COVID and political uncertainty by the day. The poems range in size from very short to a few pages, to heartfelt and kind of funny. Even weird.

I enjoyed the collection quite a bit, and not because I have been a fan of the actor since his Red Shoe Diaries days. Yes that is a deep cut. Duchovny has a very nice writing style, familiar from his numerous books, which I recommend with a droll sense of humor, and a maturity that is allowing him to look at his life and comment on it. One can see the raw places, the talks about his family, his father, and yet there is a hope a feeling that even this shall pass, not forgotten, but maybe not painful at some point. Duchovny draws on a lot of things, the Bible, song lyrics, I never thought I would see who's zooming who in a book of poetry, to create his works. Quite a few of them I hope I can remember, including one about not remembering how a joke goes and screwing up a story over and over. I liked that one, as much about it spoke to me in these odd times of fake news, and being told what the truth is.

This is a short collection. As I said if one reads this, one should read his books, as they are equally good, weird, and thought provoking. I knew vaguely that Duchovny has a music career, now I will have to check that out, just to see how good Duchovny's lyrics are. A fine collection of works for fans of poems, and for fans of Duchovny.

I went into this book with high hopes that, unfortunately, it did not live up to.
As always, let's start with the good. Duchovny has a unique voice and perspective that shines throughout the work. Much of this book feels like you’re a fly on the wall of his mind, as he remembers or ponders events in his life. Duchovny also delivers several powerful lines that I am sure we’ll see quoted in the future, such as:
"In these moments, I realize I am nothing but a recording of my own parents’ voices.”
"If your home is assembled poorly, you will be defined by what clings to you in your worst moments: your anger, your anchor."
When considering this book strictly as a poetical work, under the ideology outlined in the introduction that poetry is “useless and perfect, perfectly useless”, it had a high level of potential that was not realized. Most of the pieces feel more like early drafts than finished works. There are excellent lines in it that flow beautifully, distill some deep truth, or are relatable—but they are just that nice one-liners you have to dig for.

Unfortunately, Duchovny does not stick strictly to the realm of “perfectly useless” poetry. Frequently, he strays into philosophy and theology, often mixed haphazardly with lines that seem simply meant to shock, such as:
*They say the Big Bang happened when the devil told God to go fuck Himself.”
There’s even a piece where Duchovny writes from the perspective of God, offering lines like:
“I think maybe God is change,” and “They don't know they are praying to a dead star.”
For those who may be unfamiliar, these refer to St. Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on the immutability of God, more commonly referred to as one of his five proofs for the existence of God as the need for an “unmoved mover” and to Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead, and we have killed him.” While religion is a common topic in poetry, there was no meaningful discourse around these ideas; instead, they seemed thrown in merely to provoke.

All of this contributes to the unpolished feel of the work, but I think the most concrete example is when Duchovny attributes the quote “Angels can fly because they take themselves too lightly” to Nietzsche, when in fact it comes from G.K. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy. This may not seem like a big deal, but in a book that begins by reminding us of his Yale education, then broaches big topics like existentialism, spirituality, and mortality, it is a big deal. Chesterton was a Catholic apologist well-known for opposing Nietzsche’s teachings, so to not only confuse their writing but allow the misquote to make it into a late-stage ARC shows a level of carelessness. While I know this isn’t being marketed as an academic work, the introduction and the weight of the topics it addresses do bring it into that sphere, making a misquote like this all the more glaring.

Let me start by saying I am not a poetry person. But I’ve been trying to connect with and appreciate it. I really enjoyed a number of the poems in this collection and re-read many to think about their imagery and/or meaning. I think it’s a lovely collection for those who enjoy poetry and those, like me, who are exploring it. Thank you to netgalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

uchnovny, one of the best educated American actors, has become quite a Rennaissance Man in his later year. I knew he was a writer, just didn't know he wrote poetry too. But that tracks.
This slender volume is at least as self-indulgent as most poetry, if not more. The cover is Duchnovny's handsomely aging mug, the contents are deeply personal. A significant chunk of the book is taken up by various praise for his prose work. There there's a huge foreword by the author - likely my favorite part of the book.
And yes, he is intelligent and erudite -- all that Ivy league education has paid off.
So that's already a third of the book. The rest are poems. And they are somewhat uneven. At best, he does create some haunting imagery, and every so often there's a potent sentence that strikes a chord. Which is pretty good for such a small book.
Thanks Netgalley.

Perhaps what the world needs now is a reminder that, every once in a while, it's okay to rest in uselessness and beauty. I'm a little surprised and delighted that it's David Duchovny who's giving us this reminder! :)
The book opens with an introduction by the author that focuses on all things poetry and how he came to be writing it in the first place. The poems themselves are surprisingly and delightfully inviting to everyone, they reek of real world, they recognize the humanity in everyday things. This doesn't read like a vanity project and I'll be honest, I'm a little surprised by that. This ended up being one of the best books of poetry that I've read all year.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read the free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.