{"id":3827,"date":"2011-05-19T10:30:59","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T14:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=3827"},"modified":"2011-05-17T19:02:23","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T23:02:23","slug":"process-profile-marc-vincenz-discusses-taishan-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/19\/process-profile-marc-vincenz-discusses-taishan-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Process Profile: Marc Vincenz discusses “Taishan Mountain”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/em>
Marc Vincenz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong to Swiss-British parents during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Later, he lived and worked in Shanghai for many years running an industrial design company. More recently, he moved to Iceland\u00a0where he now works as a freelance journalist, poet, translator and literary critic. He is Poetry and Non-Fiction Editor for the international webzine <\/em>Mad Hatters’ Review<\/a>, Managing Editor of MadHat Press, and a member of the editorial board of the Boston-based <\/em>Open Letters Monthly<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Marc’s recent poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming in <\/em>Spillway, <\/em>Poetry Salzburg Review, <\/em>Poets\/Artists, Nth Position, <\/em>M\u00f6bius The Poetry Magazine, <\/em>MiPOesias, <\/em>Cha: An Asian Literary Journal<\/a>, <\/em>FRiGG, <\/em>the nervous breakdown, <\/em>elimae and <\/em>Inertia. A chapbook, <\/em>Upholding Half the Sky<\/a>, was published as part of the MiPOesias Chapbook Series by GOSS183: Casa Menendez (2010). A new chapbook, <\/em>The Propaganda Factory, is forthcoming from Argotist ebooks later this year.<\/em><\/p>\n

His poems are featured weekly on <\/em>October Babies<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In this year’s May Process Profile series, we’ve been asking several <\/strong><\/em><\/em>Lantern Review contributors whose work gestures back toward history or legacy to discuss <\/em><\/strong>their process for composing a poem of theirs that we’ve published. <\/strong><\/em>In this installment,\u00a0 Marc Vincenz discusses his poem “Taishan Mountain<\/a>,” which appeared in Issue 2<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

It happens sometimes, particularly if I am sitting up late at night attacking a blank sheaf of paper, I\u2019ll suddenly hit upon a line, probably something totally unrelated to the piece I\u2019m attempting, but a line that seems to ring true of its own volition. In \u201cTaishan Mountain<\/a>,\u201d the particular line that arrived was: \u201cIt’s here, hovering on China’s precipice, \/ the Chairman proclaims the East is Red, \/ deems himself ruler of all he beholds.\u201d When I\u2019ve captured what I think may be at the heart of a poem, or narrative, I leave it for a day or two. I let it sit there, all alone on the page, occasionally going back to it, staring at it, meditating upon it. Quite often what I consider my better lines \u201carrive\u201d when I\u2019m dozing\u2014not quite in sleep\u2014but falling towards it; to quote my own poem, \u201chovering on the precipice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this fashion, while considering the event on Taishan Mountain, this shadow appeared. At first I thought it might be a woman\u2014perhaps Jiang Qing (Mao\u2019s last wife and leader of the so-called Gang of Four)\u2014standing beside the little-big man as he conquered the world atop China\u2019s fabled Taishan Mountain. I soon realized that this persona, and consequently the narrator, was actually an unknown man. I\u2019m not sure how; perhaps it had something to do with his posture. And this man was not even Chinese. (Actually, during the course of the Communist accession to power, numerous foreigners advised Mao). I wondered, of course: what if Mao\u2019s most trusted advisor had been an unknown da bizi<\/em>, and what if this person had been his secret lover? Now, it\u2019s a fact that Mao liked the ladies, and had innumerable affairs during the course of his reign; but much of his cult of personality is still steeped in mystery\u2014as it is, of course, with many fated or fateful leaders. There is this incessant need to expose something as yet undiscovered, that one might better grasp his actions. On Taishan Mountain, a foreign man with a moustache changes our perception of everything we\u2019ve held true until now.<\/p>\n

Finally, \u201cTaishan Mountain\u201d is a poem within a collection based on my own real and imagined experiences in China: an attempt at a deeper conversation with a country where I spent much of my life. At some stage I realized that you can only start to \u201cunderstand\u201d the Middle Kingdom by breaking down Western notions of its foreignness. In reality, love in China is as any love affair might be: passionate probably, heartbreaking maybe, but surely as potentially hard\u2014or fertile\u2014as any red earth anywhere in the known universe. And, of course, it too has the potential to change our perceptions of the world.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Excerpt from “Taishan Mountain”<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Revolution: You must not move with excessive haste, nor use excessive<\/em>
\nruthlessness against the people.<\/em>
\n\u2013 the I-Ching, The Book of Changes<\/em><\/p>\n

On Taishan Mountain behind the fog
\nwe wait for first glimpses of dawn.<\/p>\n

It’s here, hovering on China’s precipice,
\nthe Chairman proclaims the East is Red,<\/p>\n

deems himself ruler of all he beholds.
\nI’m standing right beside him.<\/p>\n

We’ve just fought a war, he’s so thin,
\nand he has this steely glint<\/p>\n

as if he’s stumbled across some great illumination.
\nIt’s a moment of connection with the universe,<\/p>\n

a revelation beyond normal human comprehension,
\nsomething to make history, like Einstein<\/p>\n

unravelling the universal laws
\nof energy and mass and motion.<\/p>\n

From “Taishan Mountain<\/a>”\u00a0| Marc Vincenz |\u00a0Issue 2, <\/a>Lantern Review<\/a> | <\/em>pp 45-46.
\nClick here<\/a> to read the poem in its entirety.<\/em>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong to Swiss-British parents during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Later, he lived and worked in Shanghai for many years running an industrial design company. More recently, he moved to Iceland\u00a0where he now works as a freelance journalist, poet, translator and literary critic. He is Poetry and Non-Fiction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[318],"tags":[314,353,409,536,321],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3827"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3874,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3827\/revisions\/3874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}