In Their Final Performance

<p>IN THEIR FINAL PERFORMANCE is a collection of poems that mourns the loss of several notable musicians while celebrating their music and what it means to be a fan. Structured as a concert the opening section sets a tone for the collection in much the way an opening act would set the tone for a headliner in a concert. The poems in the opening act reference the music of Townz Van Zandt David Bowie John Lennon and Bill Withers. </p><p>Following the Opening Act the Headliner section of the book is a sequence a poems written both as elegy and tribute to singer/songwriter Jason Molina and his band Magnolia Electric Co. The poems in this section represent a live performance of one of the band’s albums where each poem represents a track on the album. They are cover songs of sorts that examine the Molina’s life his struggles with alcoholism and his early death. These poems like songs themselves weave together a variety of formal repetitive structures from the villanelle to the sestina to the pantoum as they explore music addiction and loss.</p><p>The book closes with an encore of sorts that pays tribute to Kurt Cobain and Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip giving the book a sense of closure both as an end to a concert and an end to grief. </p>