Excalibur of Spirit by Robert McAlpine

        There’s a special kind of sadness I have reserved for obscure poetry collections. Excalibur of Spirit by Robert McAlpine is one such example, since I received it in a giant box of poetry books that was gifted to me by a retiring teacher, and I can only imagine the book being untouched in a classroom for years, lumped in with others, and then given away. In the acknowledgements section that starts the collection, McAlpine expresses deep appreciation for his mentor, Dr. Kenneth George Mills, who he hails as better than Shakespeare and who inspired him to pursue writing after he retired from teaching high school. Alas, I’ve never heard of either Mills or McAlpine before and there’s that creeping worry that my fate runs too closely: a long career of teaching and publishing some forgotten, mostly bad poems.

Optimistically, though, I will say that I felt compelled to research McAlpine and I found he’s still writing and performing. Excalibur of Spirit was released in 2000, and I discovered he had a book launch in 2020, and even just a year ago was publishing videos of him reading some poems on Youtube. I’m really glad to see that he’s still pursuing his passion with such liveliness. 

As an aesthetic object, I have to say I didn’t find much enjoyment or enrichment from Excalibur of Spirit. The book’s arrangement is mostly cohesive, with different “chapters” of poems linked by some common motifs. The first seems to deal largely with inspiration and attention, while the second deals more with knowledge and mentorship. Chapter three is more pastoral in nature, focusing primarily on the environment and world around us. Chapter four and five are more or less tapping into your individuality and travel metaphors for life. Interspersed throughout the poems are artworks and photographs by a handful of artists, though I don’t think that they add much value or elevate the poetry. Rather than being in conversation with one another, the different mediums echo more than add to each other.

Even when a book does not bring much enjoyment, though, it can still prove instructive. McAlpine’s work taught me; it gave me examples that will allow me to articulate some tell-tale features of amateur poetry that hold it back from being great. I’ve documented the failings of Instagram poetry elsewhere, and while there is some overlap, emerging poets striving for literary greatness have a particular flavour worth deconstructing.

1. Emerging authors tend to personify abstract and capitalized concepts without fully embodying them or giving them physical being. There’s an ambitious engagement with High Concepts that are so awe-inspiring that it’s difficult to give them voice. For McAlpine, this comes up several times, including in the poem “The King and the Pool” that describes how “Awareness breathes an opening” and “Intuition stands behind him / And whispers softly in his ear” (7). It’s not the most egregious feature of the poetry, but it nonetheless is a trend in inexperienced poets: to think that their big feelings are transferable by simply giving them a name.

2. Young poets, including retired men just beginning to write, tend to ask questions instead of answering them. In my view, this writing approach is more indicative of brainstorming rather than a final product. Generally, I want poets to show me what they’ve found, not tell me what they wonder. I want them to do the mining and then bring me the jewels. Questions abound in Excalibur of Spirit, like in the poem “Connection”: the first stanza asks, “God speaks to me / But do I listen? / He sings to me / But do I hear?” and the third stanza asks, “What is this strange connection / Between that flower and me? / Why do I find myself engaging / Its beauty so adoringly?” (17). As I mentioned, asking what the connection between the self and the flower are is worthwhile, but the answer should be presented to us so that we, too, can share in the insights.

3. Awkward grammatical constructions and rearrangements often appear in amateur poetry, generally to preserve the metre of the line and, I suspect, appear to be more “deep.” More precisely, these poets often use passive voice. They use commas inconsistently, leaving them absent where they ought to be or using them unnecessarily in others; the strange use of commas is somewhat ironic, given that McAlpine praises Angela Wingfield for showing him the “delight to see how a well positioned comma or semi-colon can accent and underline the meaning which sometimes hovers mystically somewhere between the printed word and the awareness of the reader” (iv). There are sometimes inversions of past tense. For instance, in “Light Man,” “The electric air did burn the skin” (35)---it would be simpler to say “burned the skin.” There’s also a preponderance of what I’d refer to as blank of blank constructions. Think: “trees of green” rather than saying green trees. In one stanza, McAlpine writes “Nature’s all creative force / Bubbling in my garden / Flowing in my view / Rippling through the seeing / Of a Creation ever new?” (“Rain” 46).

4. Often poets use these strange constructions to better prioritize metre, but I would say that the rhythm of the lines is not necessarily consistent, regardless. I’ll give an example from the poem “The Beach.” The poem starts, “The whisper of love / Washes over the land / On the beach of the flat white waiting sand / Filling each pore, surrounding each grain / Parched soil absorbing the falling rain” (61). The metre is a little wonky but generally acceptable (though I’d personally switch to ‘the waiting flat white sand’). In the following stanza, he writes, “The wave recedes / Each glistening speck of sand breathes free / Joined in its warming wetness / With the beach, the sun, and the sea” (61). Something to note is that the metre changes between stanzas. The inconsistency is somewhat jarring. I’d also cut out “and” in the final line; it would flow so much better: “With the beach, the sun, the sea.” With the inconsistency of the melodiousness, I feel like the awkward grammatical structures are unwarranted.

5. New poets often like to give advice, which run perilously close to platitudes. In a poem about rowboats, McAlpine spells out the message (which was already inferrable) for the audience in the final stanza: “So don’t compare yourself with others / With whom you have been raised; / Unfurl your sails and catch the wind / Then find how you’ll be praised. / But even if you’re still in doubt / I can guarantee you’ll be amazed” (“Rowboat” 27). It’s pretty on-the-nose and it’s characteristic of poets that don’t trust their own skill to craft a message without stating it explicitly nor trust the audience enough to “get it.” That said, poets do have some wisdom to share and when McAlpine shows restraint, an appropriate truism can sneak in: “You are chosen by what you choose” (“The Invisible” 13).

All of these impulses are potentially branches of a love of obscurity. There’s a poem called “The Paragraph” that seems to be indicative of what McAlpine cherishes about writing. He appreciates challenge, as do I, and the joy of working your way through a hard piece of writing is a particular kind of thrill, but I think McAlpine betrays a misguided view. “The Paragraph” is a response poem to a piece by McAlpine’s mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills. In a short preface to the poem, he writes that “It is a testimonial to the difficulty which arises when the intellect is confronted with a wisdom originating beyond its domain” (33). The poem, though, when examined, seems not to confront sense so much as form. All of the challenges he points to are grammatical in nature: “The paragraph / Contained one single sentence. / So elusive was its explication / It taunted my analysis” (33). He talks about going to University and learning to parse sentence structures, and then continues, “I took a breath / And dove right in, / That pearl that lay so hidden / My sharp mind was about to win.” He talks about modifying clauses “in a breathless syntax ride” and “hurtling through its scratching clauses” (33). The focus is consistently on the style of the writing. To me, it is not worth valuing writing by virtue of its being obscure. I like to puzzle over the meaning, the intention, the implications, not over which dependent clause successfully elaborates on the promise of an independent clause. This love of obscurity is what feeds into the points above, I think: the obscurity of High Thoughts and Feelings and the obscurity of inverted grammatical structures in particular. Reading this way gives some insight into McAlpine’s priorities as a writer, and I think we just have a different approach.

        There’s a phenomenon happening right now surrounding “lost media.”  As sad as it is sometimes, there’s also something special about it—the fact that maybe nobody else will get to see this also gives it an elevated status. So, if you’re asking whether I liked Excalibur of Spirit, the short answer is: not particularly. But it’s still nice knowing I read it.