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Justin Jannise

How to Be Better by Being Worse

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Selected by Richard Blanco as winner of the 2019 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Justin Jannise turns the self-help manual on its head in How to be Better by Being Worse.

These poems flout, subvert, question, and ignore the rules with exploratory energy. Queer experiences are celebrated—from crushing on long-dead, sad-eyed poets to drag divas dancing at Halloween parties—gender constructs are questioned, and familial transgressions are laid bare for the world.

Delightfully modulating between flippant, sincere, and back again, How to Be Better by Being Worse freely indulges in harmless wickedness as its speaker grows in self-awareness, slowly learning to let go of inherited shame while continuing to seek self-forgiveness for the harms he has caused the outside world.
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45 printed pages
Original publication
2021
Publication year
2021

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Quotes

  • Menna Abu Zahrahas quoted3 years ago
    As part of Writers in the Schools, he has led classrooms at Field Elementary School, the High School for Law and Justice, and M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital. He is the recipient of both the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize and the Inprint Verlaine Prize in Poetry. In 2019, his poems appeared in both Best New Poets and Best of the Net, and Copper Nickel nominated his poem “Leather Jacket” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Flamingosexual” won the 2020 Pinch Literary Award. His writing has also appeared—or is forthcoming—in Hobart, Houston Chronicle, Lana Turner, New Ohio Review, Out, Palette Poetry, The Southeast Review, Split Lip Magazine, and Yale Review.
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    • Menna Abu Zahrahas quoted3 years ago
      He frequently teaches workshops for Inprint, Grackle & Grackle, and Writespace.
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      • Menna Abu Zahrahas quoted3 years ago
        Now finishing his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, Justin served a two-year term as Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.
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