Remembering Ron Goba

 

Like most people in the Boston poetry scene who have been around long enough, my first experience with Ron Goba was seeing him perform at the end of the open mic at the Cantab Lounge for Wednesday's Boston Poetry Slam. 

The man we hailed as The Venerable Doorman walked slowly to read his verse that he would call "lyrical" but read more like language poetry. For all his slow recitation, you had to stay alert or be left behind with what he was saying. It made me wonder what a two-way conversation with him would be like. 

Fast forward to years later, and I am on the Red Line seeing him on the train after the Cantab, absolutely delighted to see me and just a tad pickled. My only defense in not following him home is that I probably couldn't fathom this gentle giant could ever topple. 

I would see Ron here and there, at the Cantab, featuring at Stone Soup Poetry and other events like the Boston Poetry Month celebration at the Copley Square library. He was always supportive of my work. 

In 2009, I was invited by Prabakar T. Rajan on behalf of the entire Friends of Poetry Group including Ron, Keith Nystrom and former grad school classmate Nate Connors to feature in October  at their monthly salon gathering in Ron's house. It was a window into another world where poetry was celebrated in a household that might have been out of my childhood if not for the numerous clown paintings on the walls.. 

Ron and Nate after my feature on October 30, 2010.

After I performed for one of the warmest audiences ever, the group extended an invite for me to join the Friends of Poetry workshop at Ron's house on Tuesday nights. 

Aside from heading up the Stone Soup reading series, I had very little going on in my a life and was in at least one abusive relationship. Tuesday nights at Ron's gave me structure I didn't realize I needed. It lasted from November 2009 to March 2013, an era that only ended with the death of his beloved wife Sue.

Ron's approach to workshop me was to try and bring out what he would call the "lyricism" in my lines. It could have been seen as controversial to outside observers. I remember poet friends were looking at changes in poems I had previously shared and disagreeing. I took Ron's approach as a way to take out unnecessary words and get to the point of the poem even if the poem changed its point a little. 

At the beginning of every week, his wife Sue would send his poem out for us to review. When Tuesday came, I would generally write and/or finish and print out my poem draft and write down notes on Ron's poem to share before leaving on the train to get to the Wollaston T stop and walk to Ron's house where he and the others waited. 

Ron's poem went first, with Keith and Prabakar showing me how they approached Ron's work. I grew into the Google/Wikipedia guy, researching words and references in Ron's work and striving for further illumination. Sometimes that helped and sometimes it didn't. No one ever downplayed my approach. 

I continued to listen and to learn. On those rare moments I had something that I felt best combined my voice and Ron's technique that they had few notes for, it validated my progress. 

When I tried to write wordier poems and submit them for publication without bringing them to the group, Ron only complimented the work. 

As a workshop lead, Ron was the most giving person I have ever encountered. I saw him as a mentor and maybe a father figure as my own father died two years prior. Ron only wanted to be a friend, and that was something I was not used to in my dealings with writers. 

 

He gave me advice I never would have asked for but he knew I needed. That advice got me closer to shaving off abusive people in my life. He wanted me to be myself. Do you know how rare that is for one human being to want that of another?

Hanging out with Ron after the workshop was the best part as he sipped on scotch and told stories of his previous life in education. Stories like the time he spoke at a conference to a packed room about the placement of a comma. 

Ron was contracted to write  a curriculum book, and that project made him enough money to retire. He even beat Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia, a rare and vicious cancer, before connecting with me. He won at life, but he had so much more to give and share. He lost his wife to cancer and had other illnesses affect him, but he still had so much more to give and share.

There was always at least one Ron-ism for every wrap-up session after the workshop or the monthly feature. Some of them I wrote in my journal. Some I recorded. I wanted to get them all for posterity but ultimately thought it better to just enjoy the moment. 

Now I need to go back to my old journals for some of those Ron-isms. 

A Ron-ism brewing as the master sits after a Christmas FOP feature.

Ron and the group offered to help publish what was becoming my Patron Emeritus manuscript. Thanks to Michael Czarnecki of FootHills Publishing and a poetry colleague that encouraged me to contact him, I didn't need that, but he let me know that was there even before that opportunity came about. 

 

 

Not only did Ron and the workshop go over every poem in the book, but he also gave the collected manuscript a look and made vital suggestions. The book is such an eccentric collection that is a testament to Ron's craft and commitment as much as mine. 

I had two books published in late 2024. One was a collection of poems workshopped with the Friends of Poetry after the Patron Emeritus  manuscript. The other, written in privacy during the pandemic, could not have been written without first having the experienced the workshop and how seeing how Ron thought over every line chouse, punctuation choice and word change. 

There are other bits of pieces here and there workshopped by Ron and the Friends. I don't know whether I'll be brave enough to assemble them into a collection without his hand.  

And while I also owe debts of gratitude to Prabakar, Keith and Nate, it was Ron who invited me into his home. 

I hadn't spoken to Ron since 2020 after having bought a house and effectively starting a new career chapter. I emailed him and sent packages of my new book in 2024 and didn't receive any word back. I spent much of last year afraid I had offended him somehow until I finally called him this past December. He picked up the phone, and we picked up like no time had past.

We made plans to meet up in the spring. I felt better than I have in a long time. Then he was gone. 

Ron performing with cellist  Glynnis Lomon at the Armory in 2015.

Ron said often that he enjoyed the process of writing poetry rather than the finished product. 

 

I feel this eulogy isn't quite finished and probably never will be. For everything I've tried to add, I've neglected a thousand other facts. 

 

In the coming months, I will be going through video, photos, documents and everything else I have from Ron for years to come as he will likely continue to impact my life until my own end. 

 

By the end, I might finally understand what Ron meant to me. 

 

I think Ron would love that.