How to Be Better by Being Worse

“There’s an abundance of good poetry being written today. Poetry that exhibits good style, exercises good technique, and evokes good sentiments. But Jannise has done more than write just another good book of poetry—he’s written a great book, and beyond that, quite a memorable one.”
—Richard Blanco, from the Foreword

“This thoroughly delightful debut collection by Justin Jannise is full of wit and fire and play. He has an impressively off kilter sensibility that pierces the banality of American-style absurdities and pop culture's often vacuous signs and icons like a particularly scathing and funny X-ray (an illuminating device that he notably points at his speaker as well). Equally as impressive, his poems have real formal integrity and a structural intelligence that speaks of this poet's authentic engagement with the art. Jannise's How to Be Better by Being Worse reminds me again that poetry is supposed to be for its reader, first and foremost, a pleasure.”
—Erin Belieu, author of Come Hither Honeycomb

“If you told me I'd go nuts over a book of instructions, lists, directions...I'd probably think you were mad. But these poems by Justin Jannise are searingly funny and endlessly delightful, like opening the door of an attic and finding a treasure trove of leather jackets, dime-store novels, Freddie Mercury records—with the legerdemain of a magician, wig after wig after wig. Honey, it's funny. And giddy. And sometimes sad. The way looking through one’s snapshots often is. But How to Be Better By Being Worse is also the best thing I've read in ages. What a pleasure to read this instead of all the bad news. I know, that sounds indulgent. But sometimes we just gotta indulge or we'll die of seriousness. And who wants that on their tombstone?”
—D.A. Powell, author of Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys