The Year of the Rabbit... and Runny Babbit

Kung-Hsi-Fa-Ts'ai!  Happy Chinese New Year! Today we celebrate the Chinese Lunar Year 4709 and the beginning of  The Year of the Rabbit.  Chinese New Year traditions include house cleaning, new clothes, family gatherings, symbolic foods, gift-giving, festive decorations and, of course, parades!

The LMC has several fun books about Chinese Horoscopes.  Check them out; you might find an imaginative poem in your future!

Our first poem, from My Chinatown: One Year in Poems, shares a young immigrant boy's description of New York City's Chinatown on New Year's Day:

New Year's Day!

Noodles for breakfast,

sweet rice cakes.

A red envelope stuffed with money

in my pocket.

And lions in the street outside.

I fly downstairs to be there

when they come--

leaping, pouncing,

prancing, roaring,

jumping, dancing,

shaking their neon manes.

Drums beat

feet stamp

hands clap

voices shout

Chinatown,

this is Chinatown!

The poet Kam Mak grew up in New York City's Chinatown, and his poetic recollection is full of wonderful imagery-- words or phrases that appeal to the senses.  Imagery is a handy tool for poem-writers and for Poetry Paraders.  As we read the poem, we see neon-maned lions; we hear drums and feet and hands and voices; we touch a money-stuffed envelope in our pocket; we smell the breakfast noodles and taste the sweet rice cakes.  Imagery allows us to experience Chinese New Year's Day in Chinatown!


Our second poem, from Shel Silverstein's Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook, features word play,  switched-up language called Spoonerisms-- and a funny Runny Babbit in The Year of the Rabbit!                                

 Runny Shearns to Lare

Runny got the picken chox

And had to bay in sted,

With sped rots on his belly

And sped rots on his head.

His friends all gave him sicken choup,

Bumgalls and bicorice lends.

And guess what little Runny Babbit

Fave to all his griends!

And on that nilly sote, Poetry Paraders, we reach the end of Blursday's thog!