Farewell My Dudes: 69 Dystopian Haikus
Poetry, when encountered unexpectedly, can be unexpectedly loved. One might love it accidentally. -Mandy Kahn
Using the ancient Japanese art form of haiku as his weapon of choice, author Johnathan Rice dissects and disrupts, blasting our collective feed with razor sharp socio-political satire and insightful culture commentary. From the chaotic state of American politics to the labyrinthine emotional landscape of a Tinder date-his debut book of poetry addresses all the vacuous ennui of the modern world.
A singer-songwriter signed to Reprise Records in 2003, Rice has been recording and producing music ever since. In 2016 a shift in his life led him to move from a leafy home in Laurel Canyon to a rougher, weirder existence in Echo Park. Spending hours on Instagram, Rice eventually came to see it as a form of social hieroglyphics. This ignited a personal creative experiment, as Rice began populating his feed with words, all on an app usually reserved for images. The result was a series of what he dubbed his "dystopian haikus" and what became a cathartic, therapeutic method of using humor and poetry to comment on what he feels may be a disintegrating culture ... and his own complicity in it.
Farewell, My Dudes is a specially curated selection of Rice's 2016-17 Instagram posts, each of them a three-line, structured syllabic wonder. Sly, witty, and unexpectedly poignant, Rice's dystopia is simultaneously insightful and hilarious. It is an assortment of keenly observed statements about life, music, art, social media, brunch-and of course love. Edited by Jessica Hundley & J.C. Gabel Introduction by Mandy Kahn Designed by Taylor Giali
Softcover, 160 pages 4¾ × 7½ in. 12.065 × 19.05 cm.