With the Covid-19 pandemic, there have obviously been dozens of books that haven’t received the shine they might have under normal circumstances. One in particular that I’ve recently enjoyed is Justin Jannise’s poetry collection
How to be Better by Being Worse, winner of the 2019 A. Poulin, Jr Poetry Prize (as selected by Richard Blanco) and just out from BOA Editions. Endlessly quotable, packed with poignancy and humor (oftentimes within the same poem),
How to be Better by Being Worse is, like a great James Schuyler poem, something to savor. The voice effortlessly shakes hand with the language and the poems seem less written than willed, ordained. Below Jannise discusses “What I’m Into,” the first poem in the volume, along with other notable