Today is Lunar New Year. It marks the beginning of a new year in the lunisolar calendar. It is an important holiday in China, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and countries with a large diasporic East Asian population.
To celebrate, we are sharing a few poems from our archive that pertain to Lunar New Year and its celebrations.
Fortunetelling Yi Sang Translated from the Korean by Jack Jung
The fortuneteller pencil-sketches the basic outline of my life on a paper. How can it be so sparse? I surrender my money and my past to this outline and enter its meaningless chatter. However, there are only promised handshakes with strangers.
