Another new year begins, this time, it is the start of the Year of the Rabbit per the Chinese calendar. First, wishing all who celebrate it, a wonderful New Year – Xīnnián kuàilè” (新年快乐) // Xīnnián hǎo” (新年好) // “Gong hei fat choy” (恭喜发财)!! Today, as I contemplate various things, including happiness, I decided I should be drawing happy parallels using the lushi poetic form from China.

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Poetic Sundays: Drawing Happy Parallels With the Lushi

Last year on this Sunday, I attempted to work with Parallelismus Membrorum given National Opposite Day is on the 25th. Read more about that in the linked post. Today, I explore parallelism once again, but keeping in mind the start of the Chinese New Year, am featuring a poetic form from China that does so – the lushi.

What is the Lushi Poetic Form?

An important classical Chinese poetic form, the lushi is an eight-line regulated verse form with lines made up of five, six, or seven characters. While the six-character version is rarer, both the five and seven character verses are more commonly seen. Regulated verse means that

• all lines are of even length (for lushi, as noted earlier, can 5, 6, or 7 characters , or when writing in English – words)
• rhyme is mandatory: here, even lines are monorhymed
• parallelism is used in the poems. In the lushi, the third and fouth lines are parallel to each other, as are the fifth and sixth. The Chinese lushi poems employ tonal parallelism which is not easily possible in English, so we could use grammatical or literary parallelism instead.
• a caesura, or pause, precedes the last three characters/words of every line

A Lushi Poem’s Characteristics

So a lushi poem’s elements are that at its most basic, it is:

• stanzaic: is a single stanza of 8 lines
• word-based: each line must have the same number of words (can be either 5, 6, or 7)
• rhymed: even numbered lines have a monorhyme
• employing a caesura in each line, breaking it into halves
• one that uses internal parallelism in the middle two couplets, with the, the third and fourth line being parallel with each other and the fifth and sixth lines being parallel with each other

h/t: wikipedia, allpoetry, Britannica, poetscollective,

My Lushi Attempt

Is work in progress

Recently

On My Blog And the Homefront

Here are the posts this week

• Sunday Scribblings #130: A Terrific Thesaurus in a Teacup
• Looking for Magic? Here is Some!
• My Bookish Goals For This Year and Beyond
• Exploring the Thesaurus is Fun and More!
• 13 Cool Things About Poe: Poe-Pular Books and More
• Fantastic Feasting In Dishoom Style
• The Hunt for Happiness and More

This Week’s Celebrations

Literary Celebrations (close-to-it also!)

• Literary birthdays this week include: Edith Wharton and Santha Rama Rau on the 24th; Robert Burns, Stephen Chbosky, Virginia Woolf, and W. Somerset Maugham on Jan 25th; Anita Nair, Shannon Hale and Susan Griffin on the 26th of Jan; Lewis Carroll of Jan 27th; Susan Choi on Jan 28th; Anton Chekhov on the 29th of January
• The 23rd of January is National Handwriting Day
• January 24th happens to be the International Day of Education
• The 25th celebrates Burns Supper (UK) as well as Library Shelfie Day (Fourth Wednesday in January)

Foodie Celebrations

• January 23rd is for a favorite savory and sweet delight, for it is National Pie Day. It is also International Sticky Toffee Pudding Day!
• National Peanut Butter Day follows on Jan 24
• The 25th of January is National Irish Coffee Day
• While the 26th is National Green Juice Day and National Peanut Brittle Day
• A delish day on the 27th! It happens to be National Chocolate Cake Day
• January 28th is National Blueberry Pancake Day followed by
• National Corn Chip Day, which is on the 29th of January

Other Celebrations

• January 24th is National Compliment Day as well as Global Belly Laugh Day. It also happens to be Just Do It Day! So why not just do whatever you have had in mind for a while, and while you are at it, also pay someone a compliment, and also enjoy a hearty laugh with someone.
• National Opposite Day is on the 25th
• The 26th is National Spouses Day
• India celebrates its Republic Day on the 26th of January
• The 27th of January is International Holocaust Remembrance Day
• It is Pop Art Day and National Lego Day on January 28 while
• January 29th is National Puzzle Day

Related Reads or More Ways of Drawing Happy Parallels

• 22 Children’s Books Related to China for the Chinese New Year

Wrapping up my Sunday Scribblings

So dear reader, you have reached the end of this Sunday Scribblings! As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and suggestions about this post. And do let me know if you plan to celebrate any of these mentioned celebrations this coming week/month?

Linking this to the Sunday Post over at the Caffeinated Reviewer and the Sunday Salon. And of course to the Ultimate Blog Challenge as well!