Ferdinand the Bull

 

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Filmography: Ferdinand the Bull (1938)

This is a story I heard a long time ago. I thought I would share it this morning. With spring in the air, it seems a good time:

Ferdinand was a bull. Now he was no ordinary bull – he was a Spanish bull. Being a Spanish bull, he was a romantic bull and boy did he love cows. Out of all the cows in the world, Ferdinand loved heifer cows the best. When he was about two years old, it was his time to go to the market and get a heard of his own.

After much haggling between the two men, Ferdinand was on his way to his new home walking beside his new human. You see, the farmer that bought young Ferdinand was poor but seemed a nice sort so things looked pretty good. As they walked the man talked with his new friend.

“Now Ferdinand,” said the man, “I don’t have much to offer you. If fact I am just starting a new heard and all the cows are still heifers.”

Ferdinand’s ears perked up even more, you don’t have to worry about me, the young bull thought, I’ll do my part.

And that he did. A couple of years later, the farmer was looking over his fields one morning and could see cows everywhere. In fact, he now had more cows than he could feed. “That Ferdinand sure is one good bull,” he told his wife. “I will have to do something about it thought; we cannot afford to feed all these cows. I will build a pen for him, just until I can take some of them to the market.”

Ferdinand watched the farmer build the pen and even help out by pulling the wagon for him. It was not until he was inside his finished home he began to understand something was wrong. Walking around the pen, he found he could not get to any of his cows. All he could do is look at the farmer with a deep sadness in his eyes.

“Now, now Ferdinand, do not worry. You will be back with your cows soon. I just have to take some to the market,” the farmer reassured him. “After that, things will be back to normal.”

Thinking on it, Ferdinand realized the farmer had been very good to him so he would play along for a few days and then just knock the fence down and visit his cows. After about a week, he was feeling kind of frisky when he awoke and looked out to see a group of cows about two-hundred yards away. Yep, today is the day, he thought. I’ll just bust out of here and pay those girls a visit.

Ferdinand back up a few yards and trotted at the fence and rammed it. It did not move. Hmm… this is going to take some effort, he told himself. Now as he looked out, the cows where about one-hundred yards off and he really wanted out of the pen. Moving halfway across the pen, he snorted once stamped the ground and charged the gate with enough speed he thought would carry him through. BOOM! Ferdinand hit the fence, again it did not move. This time the bull had to shake it off and was now mad. “How could my friend do this to me,” he let out in one long, low moo. To make it worse, now the cows were close enough to dive him wild. He was determined to get out.

Backing up to the far side of the pen, Ferdinand snorted and pawed the ground blowing dust up and he dropped his head low. Just like his cousins that fight the matadors, he charges with everything he had, this time the fence will surly fall! A KABOOM rings out as Ferdinand hits the fence and dust and dirt clouds swirl about. As the air clears a bit, there is Ferdinand, flat on the ground. Coming too, and shaking his head, he sees the fence held fast.

The cows came over to see what all the fuss was about and now he could rub noses with them. This just made him beyond sad as he knew he was trapped. Poor Ferdinand just wandered over to a tree away from the cows and dropped in huff to the ground and hung his head. Looking back over at his cows, he was just about to loose all hope when he really started looking at the fence.

All of the sudden, Ferdinand formed a new idea. I can jump that fence, he thought as the smile returned to his face and he stood with new energy. He looked at the fence again, I am sure of it, I can just jump it. Backing up to the far end of his pen and this time with more speed than he had ever run before, Ferdinand charges the fence. Getting to just the right spot, Ferdinand jumps with all his might and barely goes over the top and lands right next to this cute little heifer cow.

“Hey, you must be Ferdinand the Bull!” she moos with excitement.

“Just call me Ferdinand,” he moos back. “That fence was just a little higher than I thought!”

Free-verse, free-verse everywhere, but still no poets think

Walt Whitman
Father of Free-verse

I am often asked where my inspiration comes from regarding my poetry.  I am taken a little aback by this, as I think my poetry is self-evident. I guess they are asking more about what makes me see the world as I do rather than what a particular poem is all about.

For me, my life is poetry, not some free-verse prose form that runs on like a bad version of Hemmingway.  No, the poetry of my life is more like Frost, Dickenson, and Yeats.  In other words, it has something to say, a singular point to make.

I will never be a modern poet.  I do not understand spoken-word or slam poetry.  I’m not knocking them, it’s just not me.  I am all about metaphor and form, that and a good selection of adjectives.  It has been said I write “like a nineteenth century poet.”  I am sure it was not meant as a compliment but for me there could be no greater.  I am lost in a romantic time when true craftsmanship existed in poetry.

In the end, modern poetry has just passed me by.  In fact, I see free-verse much the same as Robert Frost.  He put it like this: “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”  I tend to think the form is over used today.  In a sense, it is advanced poetry.  It requires the poet to be poetic without the use of ninety percent of poetry’s tools.  It is like a carpenter building a house with just a hammer.

Still, it does have its place, there is no denying that.  To be honest, some of my more popular poems are free-verse.  My point is I use the form sparingly.  I produce a work in that style, and then retreat back to the safety of rhyme and meter.  It is like coming home after a vacation.   It is good to get out and see the world, but nothing beats coming home.

Perhaps it is the fast-paced world that promotes free-verse.  I mean if all you have to do is move from a to b and not worry over structure, results come quickly.  I am not sure “quickness” is what Walt Whitman wished to inspire or that the controversial poet, Ezra Pound accepted a “fire and forget” approach to poetry.  They mastered the use of words and kept a poetic feel to their work.  Pound’s great free-verse The Garden has little in common in approach, style and feel of works produced today.  The effort he expended is obvious and the result speaks for itself.

Opening Stanza of The Garden:

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.

Of course Ezra would be happy with poetry going beyond where he left it.  He even said to do just that.  My point is not about the newness, it is the seeming lack of effort I feel with much of what I read in today’s free-verse offerings.  I feel it debases the art of poetry.  I get the sense a young poet reads some T.S. Eliot and thinks “I can do that,” never realizing the painstaking time and deliberate word selection Eliot struggled with.  Even one of his best poems, one of the best poems ever, The Waste Land has been criticized for its disconnection and disjointed style, more a criticism of free-verse than Eliot.   Still, when you read it, then step back from it, the symmetry and beauty of the work stands like a beacon in the night.

The opening lines of The Waste Land:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

What all these champions of free-verse had in common is the ability to pick and choose the elements they used and remain poetic.  They knew how to color outside the lines.  That is what seems to be missing today.  While they abandoned the rules, they never abandoned style.

In the end, each poet must walk their own path.  My 2¢ worth of advice will not hold even that value to them.  My only hope is young poets wake up and put in the effort to produce true poetry and not just slap a few catchy words together and think themselves brilliant.

Dorothy Parker, the Woman I Would Have Most Liked to Lunch With

I woke up this morning needing a smile.  In responding to a friend I made comment about Dorothy Parker.  Reading her words always makes me smile.  Having passed away in 1967, many today may not be familiar with her work and wit.

Dorothy was born in 1893.  This age put her in her prime in the Roaring 20s and being in New York City at a time, when women began to step out with a voice truly their own, her wit was well received.  She is the source of many classic and witty sayings, such as:

“Men seldom make passes
at girls who wear glasses.”

She used this sort of tongue-in-cheek wit while she was the poetry editor and drama critic for Vogue and Vanity Fair.  It is cute and flirty but understates the depth Dorothy could go to make a point.  As a charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, a daily luncheon of New York writers and wits between 1919 and 1929, she was often challenging during word games.  During one such lunch, Franklin P Adams challenged her to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence.  Dorothy replied:

“You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”

It is easy to write about Ms. Parker in rosy platitudes, but she would hate that.  Better to just let a few of her better known quotes speak for themselves:

“Time doth flit; oh shit.”

“I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.”

“Ducking for apples — change one letter and it’s the story of my life.”

“She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.”

“This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”

“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

“Women and elephants never forget.”

“If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

“She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”

“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”

“Q: What’s the difference between an enzyme and a hormone?
A: You can’t hear an enzyme.”

“Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

But my favorite Dorothy quote was made in response to a telegram she received on her honeymoon from her editor stating the publisher wanted to know why she did not meet a deadline.  Her telegram back simply read:

“Tell him I was too fucking busy– or vice versa.”

Jack Kerouac is a Friend of Mine

I made reference the other day to Jack Kerouac being important to me,  it did not take long for curious readers to inquire as to why.  I’ve dusted off some old thoughts on it and post them in response.

Jack Kerouac was a friend of mine.  OK, OK so I never knew the guy, we are kindred spirits nonetheless.   Hell, we even share the same birthday.  I have been told I am the last of the true bohemians.  That may or may nor be true.  If I am a bohemian, it would be out of character for me to say, either way.

So many people think it romantic in some fashion to live a life of reckless abandon.  Other’s feel it is just plain stupid.  I don’t accept that I am doing that.  I live true to my own self and make no apologies for it.  I am a poet at heart; it defines the very core of me. I take life in, allow it to affect me, to change me, and then write about it.  Not all poets change the world, as Jack did, but we do start the quiver in the snow that leads to the avalanche of change.  That is enough for me.

Jack and I differ on one point, being self-destructive.  I am not sure he understood that his life was self-destructive.  Moreover, I am not sure he would have cared – it simply was who he was.  As for me, my only vice is coffee (flirting with women is not a vice).  I drink it by the gallon.  Black is best but I will take some cream if I have to drink the swill from Starbucks.  Unlike Jack, my influences from the world take time, his happened in a thunder-clap. Being self-destructive seemed to be part of that; it just goes against my nature.

Jack shook the world with mighty jolts, his time called for that.  His writings challenge us to look at things with a different prospective.  How boring would life be if we were all stuck in “Ward and June Cleaver” mode?  We have Jack, and all the bohemians of his day, to thank for it not being so.  They opened the door that would lead to free-spirited sixties.

As a poet, I seek the smaller patches of snow to turn loose, the ones that live high on the mountain, the ones that take time and great effort to reach.  You see, my mind is more singular in nature; my poetry is about the smaller things in life.   For me, it’s about seeing the world in a single flake of snow.  Jack saw a world full of complexities and railed against it.  We both see the need for change.

It is for certain the world needs change, to always change.  That is what bohemians understand.  I don’t want to change the entire world in a day; I just want change to start.  I am grateful to Jack for all he did. I’m not sure without him; I could live the life I do.  Even if you disagree with the choices he made, you have to admit he did change how we see the world – in this way; he will always be a kindred spirit and a mentor. This is I say Jack is a friend.

It really is a World Wide Web

I was just checking the statistics for my website. Since the beginning of the year my blog page has been visited 2,373 time from 34 different countries from all the continents, except for Antarctica of course. It really does show the ability of the web to disseminate information around the world. No wonder governments feel the need to control it, they recognize it power, power they can’t control.

Sort of hard to think I can write something, and a hour later it is being read by people in Indonesia.

Thank You!

I wish to thank everyone for helping make my Amazon Kindle book promotion a success.  Over 300 people took advantage and downloaded In the Wake of Enchantress and Life’s About the Adjectives.  It is a wonderful way to gain exposure for work.  As a way of thanks, I am making my short story about my father’s battle with cancer available for free for a few days before it goes into the Amazon Prime program.  Just click on the picture below.  Of course, if you do not have a Kindle, you can simple download the free app for IPAD, Nook,PC or whatever you have.  It’s free and can be found at the same link.

 

Again, Thanks!

Read my Kindle Books for Free

OK, this is just an ad but I figure I need to make my blog work a bit harder for me than it has so far. There is a promotion this weekend of my books for the Kindle Reader on Amazon this weekend. You can download, for free, the novel, “In Wake of Enchantress” and the poetry collection, “Life’s About the Adjectives.”  Just click on the titles of the pictures below to go to its Amazon page.

Click here to go to Amazon Page

Click here to go to Amazon Page

All I ask if you give me a review, good or bad, that is up to you. I do hope you enjoy them though.