David Duchovny + Jia Tolentino: About Time: Poems

Join us for a release event with award-winning actor, director, best-selling author, and singer-songwriter David Duchovny, discussing his debut poetry collection About Time. Joining David in conversation is author and New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

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From acclaimed author, actor, and singer-songwriter David Duchovny, a deeply personal, existential, and insightful debut poetry collection.

David Duchovny’s seventh published—and first poetic—work covers a range of intimate themes and topics, including love, the loss of love, parenting, Duchovny’s own parents (in particular his father, who looms large throughout the work), alienation, and other emotional quandaries. Fans of Duchovny’s fiction will recognize the insightful and clever play of words that, in this new form, distill to an emotionally impactful portrayal of what the author holds most dear.

Duchovny’s approach to poetry is beautifully (and, typically, humorously) encapsulated in his introduction to the work, in which he writes:

Poetry is not useful. And that is exactly why we need it. It reminds us of two important things: our ultimate lack of agency (unpopular to say, I know) and our inability to say anything plain, our inability to capture what it means to be human with the imperfect tool of words; we come face-to-face with our shadow selves, for in the end we will all die and be forgotten, and come away with nothing, nothing in the way of utility anyway, no talking points, no bullet points, no propaganda, no resolutions, no policy, no knowledge. If anything, maybe we remember a few lines . . . something like a pop song from the collective unconscious, something like wisdom.

You see, I wanted to say it plain, but out comes that torrent of modifiers and adjustments, denials, double negatives, shading, stabs at wit, backpedaling, playing at capturing the lightning. Maybe this time. Maybe that’s what a poem is—that glorious feeling of Maybe this time I’ll get it right. If that’s the case, it seems a worthy enterprise to me. You see, I got somewhere, but the way back is unclear—that’s a good enough definition of poetry for now. No, it’s not.

Duchovny’s efforts at achieving such clarity range in this collection from laser-sharp, single-sentence poems to emotionally sweeping ruminations. With About Time—perhaps his most personal work to date—Duchovny continues his journey as one of the most prolific creators of his generation.

Photo credit: Ekaterina Gerbey

DAVID DUCHOVNY is an award-winning actor, director, New York Times best-selling author, and singer-songwriter. With an acting career spanning more than three decades, Duchovny is a two-time Golden Globe winner and four-time Emmy nominee. His novels include Truly Like Lightning, Holy Cow, The Reservoir (a novella), and Bucky F*cking Dent which Duchovny adapted into the film Reverse the Curse. The film, directed by Duchovny, premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. As a musician, Duchovny has released three studio albums: Hell or Highwater, Every Third Thought, and Gestureland. He is the host of the podcast Fail Better.

Photo credit: Elena Mudd

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker, the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror, and a screenwriter. Formerly, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. She grew up in Texas, received her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, and got her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. In 2020, she received a Whiting Award as well as the Jeannette Haien Ballard Prize. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine and Pitchfork, among other places. She lives in Brooklyn.

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