In early 2016, two months after the hardback publication of Dead Man's Float, Jim Harrison was found dead in his home office. The literary world mourned a great loss, and tributes were published around the world. Novelist Tom McGuane wrote in The New Yorker: "On Saturday night, my oldest friend, Jim Harrison, sat at his desk writing. He wrote in longhand. The words trailed off into scribbles and he fell from his chair dead....." What Harrison was writing was a new poem, and the paperback release of Dead Man's Float will contain that final poem. Jim Harrison always thought he would die young, and when he didn't he became increasingly preoccupied with time. Because old age proved to be such a trial, Harrison took special delight in titling his book "dead man's float" after a survival technique used by swimmers during an exhausting journey. Throughout this heartbreaking and harrowing book--which the Los Angeles Times called "a flinty and psalmist look at mortality and wonder"--Harrison invoked fellow poets who suffered greater hardships and brutal deaths--Lorca, Machado, Mandelstam--and marveled at the lasting beauty they created.