I call this a translation because I take a very famous quote from one of Teddy Roosevelt’s speeches and I make it a poem. I go from 136 words to 75, a summary of sorts and all good summaries are a translations. (In the spirit of play I also am drafting a video poem as well.)
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
Permalink //
Nice interpretation, Terry. I’m muddling through my own work… er, play, on this.
Permalink //
We all get knocked down a few times as we journey through life. Getting up and trying again is the courage needed to make life worth living. I think we have this in big, or small, doses at different times in our lives and it’s different for each of us.