12 Contemporary Poetry Collections to Read Based on Your Chinese Zodiac

Time is such a slippery thing! How do we count it? By books read, conversations had, people loved, or lost? As we approach the Lunar New Year, I am struck by the many ways different cultures mark the passage of time. For my Korean family, the Lunar New Year held the anticipation and gifts of Christmas, the feasting of Thanksgiving, and was always accompanied by storytelling for the beginning of a new animal year.

In writing my debut poetry collection Brine Orchid, I kept thinking about how the stories we tell each other, and ourselves, shape our experiences of the world around us, and even our own identities. In my poems, myths intertwined with family legends, immigration records echoed Bible stories, and fairytales from both Asian and North American experience tangled into a way of understanding my own multicultural identity. One of my favorite stories was of the Great Race and the Chinese Zodiac—I loved the idea that we each have an animal counterpart whose action parallel our own character and destiny. The myth of the Great Race is one way of keeping time: Since the Han dynasty, months and years were split into 12-part cycles with accompanying animals, stories, lucky numbers, favored flowers, and more. According to legend, the Jade Emperor called the animals to a race that included crossing a vast river, and the animals were given their place in the zodiac based on the order they completed the race—an unexpected sequence impacted by their dispositions, choices, strengths, and methods for crossing the river. Many were intertwined with one another—the snake wrapped around the horse to be carried to the finish line, the rat rode on the kind oxen’s back across the river, the goat, monkey, and rooster worked together to cross the water on a raft—and some believe we carry these relationships with us into our own lives.

As the Year of the Snake wanes and the Year of the Horse waxes, celebrate this Lunar New Year by connecting with a new book of poetry, perhaps based on your or a loved one’s zodiac animal. What qualities, energies, and luck do we hope for, look toward, and carry with us into the future? Which animal are you, and how might its strengths and weaknesses map onto the music of poetry? Find out!

Rat

1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020 

Quick-witted, resourceful, versatile, kind

Let the Moon Wobble by Ally Ang

As the famed winner of the Chinese Zodiac Race, the Rat—and the people born in its years—are believed to overcome all odds to achieve their goals. Like this zodiac sign, Let the Moon Wobble breaks rules of form, denies borders, enjambs lines, and overcomes distances with creativity, resourcefulness, and wit. When faced with impossible or uncomfortable questions, the poet says, “I lie / like I always do.” The ungovernable beauty of this collection is messy, wild, joyful, grieving, and triumphant.

Ox

1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009, 2021

Diligent, dependable, strong, determined

I Always Carry My Bones by Felicia Zamora

Known for persistence verging on stubbornness, reliability, industriousness, and unpretentious practicality, people born in the Year of the Ox are believed to be both gentle and capable. Embodying this zodiac, I Always Carry My Bones is diligent in its many “carryings”—of heritage, body, archive, evidence, anger, and hope. There is a determination throughout the collection to honor culture and survival. “You are not alone” the poems repeat, both fiercely and kindly. “Your migration: / to protect our story; an evolution to that which they cannot devour.” With an oxen’s profound strength, this collection perseveres, illuminates, and persists.

Tiger

1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, 2010, 2022

Brave, confident, competitive

Best Barbarian by Roger Reeves

The zodiac Tiger sign is not only an emblem of strength, courage, work ethic, and luck—it is also known to exorcize evil. Best Barbarian rages, sings, and writhes against the violences of racism and colonialism with the Tiger’s ferocity, power, and leadership. “How else shall I carry the abyss /Between us other than as fire” these poems demand. With an anger at injustice that roars and a terrifying beauty, Best Barbarian and the Tiger both shine brightly in the darkest places.

Rabbit

1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011, 2023

Quiet, elegant, kind, responsible

Maybe the Body by Asa Drake

Witty, sensitive, ingenious, and adaptive, people born in the Year of the Rabbit balance sincerity and anxiety with genuineness. Maybe the Body, too, is rich with the urgency and stress that come from earnestly loving others and knowing they can be lost. Rabbits are considered marked by longevity and prosperousness, but books like this ask—is it luck, or is it actually skill and vigilance that create our fortune? Only a poetry collection as clever as this one, deftly turning over and over many different kinds of love, can match a sign that is, at once, gentle, and elegant and shrewd and warning: “When I feed the animals / the rabbit stands up /so straight she falls over. / This is the part I want / you to know. We are / that kind of animal.”

Dragon

1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000, 2012, 2024

Confident, intelligent, enthusiastic

Leaving Biddle City by Marianne Chan

Inventive, playful, and richly mythological, Leaving Biddle City embraces the Dragon zodiac’s paradoxes. With one foot in Michigan and the other in the Philippines, these poems manage to be both confident and tentative as they navigate multicultural identity: “I forget sometimes that we are ancient and holy.” Circling and repeating language and form, the dragon coils on itself, questioning reason, memory, and the impossibility of identity and new beginnings. Goal-oriented and romantic, people born in the Year of the Dragon are the rarest zodiac sign, and it is fitting to match the sign with the keenest sense of self and identity with a book that is “[a]lways moving. Always starting over.” 

Snake

1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013, 2025

Enigmatic, intelligent, wise

Self-Mythology by Saba Keramati

If you were born in the Year of the Snake, you might have the serpent’s sensitivity, wisdom, passion, and suspicious nature. In the zodiac myth, the snake springs ahead of the horse in the race, defying expected order through cleverness and surprise. Self-Mythology is a miracle, both sensitive and sensual, whether depicting medical trauma, a family origin story, or an intimate encounter, these poems do so with delicate lyric and restless form. From abecedarian to erasure to ghazal, the poems are intimate, beautiful, and hungry. As Keramati writes: “Oh, there is more of me on / the inside. Oh, it is eating me alive.” 

Horse

1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, 2014, 2026

Animated, active, energetic

The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket by Kinsale Drake

People born in the Year of the Horse are known for their confidence, initiative, and enthusiasm that can rush into impatience. Only a poetry collection like The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket can reach the horses’ exuberant momentum and boundless energy. With sharp humor, solemn remembrance, vivid imagery, and shining ethnomusicology, these poems illuminate: “How do I start a story I never lived? / I think I remember stories because they are violent. / Or because there is music.” These poems write and rewrite, trace and retrace our world with dancing light and vivid music.

Goat

1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003, 2015, 2027

Calm, gentle, sympathetic

The Lengest Neoi by Stephanie Choi

With insight, care, ingenuity, and love, this poetry collection does what people born in the Year of the Goat do so well with their creativity, compassion, artistic spirit, and desire for everyone to get along. The Lengest Neoi recognizes obstacles to harmony and the pains of racism, disconnection, and diaspora, while drawing us closer together. This is a book that navigates the granular details that make us up—tattoos, teeth, hair, names—with creative form, high emotional intelligence, and deep compassion. These poems invite us into the intimacies of navigating multicultural experience, whether puzzling through migrations in a crossword puzzle poem or turning over and over the translations of a name. People from this year might not feel lucky, but they make others lucky by proximity, and Choi’s book does this too, with capaciousness and generosity.

Monkey

1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016, 2028

Sharp, smart, curiosity

The Museum of Small Bones by Miho Nonaka

In my opinion, people born in the Year of the Monkey need to be celebrated more, and so does Museum of Small Bones. With clever eyes, excellent memories, and dexterous strategy, people born in this year catch things no one else does, and this poetry collection rewards careful reading. Alight with transparent objects—glass marbles, glimmering goldfish, unwinding silk—these poems are more than they seem, gleaming with mystery, beauty, sensitivity, and a curiosity and intelligence characteristic of the zodiac’s Monkey. Nonaka’s keen eye traces the relationships between objects and people, managing to sensitively navigate nuances in both Japanese and American culture. “I dreamed of a power // to make small, imperceptible things / perceptible,” the poet explains. You will be rewarded for looking more than once!

Rooster

1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005, 2017, 2029

Observant, hardworking, courageous

Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf

If you were born in the Year of the Rooster, you might be the one to call out things for what they are. This is exactly what Consider the Rooster does so remarkably—with wonder, surprise, intensity, condemnation, and heart. This is among the largest poetry books on my shelf! Its poems shift and shimmer in fragmented forms across pages, at once loud, funny, dark, and dazzlingly queer. This book wields poetry to sound the alarms on injustice, celebrate the more-than-human world, and shine light into liminal spaces. As Bendorf puts it in his coy, courageous way: “I offer you my bright dumb / hopes for democracy. May your vote always / be counted.”

Dog

1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006, 2018, 2030

Loyal, honest, prudent

murmurations by Anthony Thomas Lombardi

Folks born in the Year of the Dog are devoted, straightforward, and full of passion—and so is murmurations. Like a full-chested song, this debut poetry collection shimmers with exuberance, tinged with the worshipful quality of a hymn. As an addict himself, the poet imagines a world in which Amy Winehouse had recovered her addiction and survived, weaving fragments from her stepwork journal with energetic lyric poems on faith, loss, and hope: “how do i make room / for all this grief? . . . or is it grief / that needs to / make room for me?” Perhaps the most notable of the Dog’s characteristics is loyalty, and these poems pledge loyalty to living, to sobriety, to an undying love for Amy Winehouse, with an energy and lyricism that is unforgettable.

Pig

1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007, 2019, 2031

Compassionate, generous, diligent

Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man by Jose Hernandez Diaz

Sincere, community-oriented, and determined, Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man celebrates Mexican American experience, sings with surrealism, and refuses to rush at anyone’s pace but its own. The zodiac Boar is an emblem of wealth, honesty, and practicality. Just as Diaz’s collection reflects the poet’s own principles and identity through image and grounded poetic forms, Boars are down-to-earth, diligent, substantial, and trustworthy omens of good fortune. This book of odes “abandons the hierarchies” of language, culture, and even animal races.