Cara Haxo, composer
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Hypnagogia (2015)

SSAATTBB vocal octet
c. 4 minutes
​text by Emily Corwin

Read by Roomful of Teeth
Aasen-Hull Hall, Eugene, OR, 31 January 2016
hypnagogia (noun) – the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep
​

Emily Corwin and I both graduated from The College of Wooster in 2013. Recently I have had the pleasure of reading her hauntingly beautiful poetry online. When I mentioned to her the possibility of setting one of her poems to music, she generously sent me a document full of poems, saying I could choose whichever one suited me best. The text of “hypnagogia” immediately captured my attention, as it perfectly evoked the strange and mysterious process of drifting asleep. I sought to express this same feeling in my music. This is particularly true of the ending, where each voice drifts off one by one, as if the final strands of consciousness are giving way to sleep.

hypnagogia

This is how you slip
out of the dream shows, out of the train cars
the tree root, ripples in a darkroom. This is how

you run with scissors, clipping shadow fruit
tailbones rattle in the closet. Press your face

here, into the early water, comb the nightfall
from your mouth. Maybe you will find a white

hair, string of ash, of engine smoke
​glowing slow on you like a ribbon


like the kind they tie over your eyes in sleep
​the kind you cut by morning.
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© 2025 by Cara Haxo. All Rights Reserved. All website artwork © 2025 by Thomas Haxo. Visit thomhaxo.com.
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