Funeral Playlist - Paperback

by Sarah Gorham (Author)

Using her own "funeral playlist," Sarah Gorham examines the intricate connections between music, consolation, and human mortality.

The essays in this unique collection explore a diverse range of songs, including Mozart's "Benedictus" (The Requiem), Nina Simone's rendition of "Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair." Caccini's 17 th century madrigal "Amarilli, mia bella," the Irish "Parting Song," Matthew Houck's (aka Phosphorescent) dirge-like "Be Dark Night," and "King and Lionheart," sung by Of Monsters and Men. But there's also the song of a mourning dove, and the nonchalance of a human hum. All may become a medium of transcendence for the living (and, possibly, the departed).

What makes the book distinctive is its deeply personal approach. A series of memoir-like interstices reveal what art and artmaking can do to unite these subjects. By sharing her own story and the music that has shaped it, Sarah Gorham invites readers to think about their own relationship with death and what they want their own funeral playlist to look like.

Author Biography

SARAH GORHAM is a poet and essayist, most recently the author of Alpine Apprentice (2017), which made the short list for 2018 PEN/Diamonstein Award in the Essay and Study in Perfect (2014), selected by Bernard Cooper for the 2013 AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction. Both were published by University of Georgia Press. Gorham is also the author of four collections of poetry-- Bad Daughter (2011), The Cure (2003), The Tension Zone (1996), and Don't Go Back to Sleep (1989). Other honors include grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three state arts councils, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Media coverage has included Bomb, Kirkus, Salon, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Agni, Diagram, Utne Reader, Slate, Library Journal, Shelf Unbound, The Nation, Real Simple, The Missouri Review, and more. She is the retired co-founder and editor-in-chief at Sarabande Books, an independent, nonprofit, literary publisher. The press was selected as the inaugural winner of the AWP Small Press Publisher Award in 2013. And recently, CLMP chose Sarabande as 2022 winner of the Golden Colophon Award for Paradigm Independent Publishing.