In an age of hyperbole, calling Richard Gold a saint would probably provoke a healthy dose of knee-jerk skepticism.
No doubt the self-deprecating Gold, who wouldn't stand out in a crowd, would be first among skeptics.
Gold, semi-retired from the software industry, teaches poetry workshops to incarcerated kids-abused, cast out kids, kids exposed to trauma and violence, kids dealing with crazy parents and immigrant kids shattered by their transition experience-the vulnerable, human detritus of our culture's underside.
Gold also knows what many of us forget: 16-year-olds, no matter how tough seeming or cynical, are children.
And yet, "These kids are forerunners," Gold said. "They see more deeply into the human experience."
The West Seattle resident has spent much of the last 12 years taking his poetry workshops to the King County Juvenile Detention Center, the Child Study and Treatment Center at the State Psychiatric Hospital in Tacoma, the Echo Glen Children's Center in Snoqualmie and other venues where kids in dire straits are held.
After Gold completes his sessions, he publishes the results in booklet form. Numerous copies of the booklets, containing harrowing, heartbreaking insights into the human condition, find their way to workers in the criminal justice system.
Here's one poem, by "Lee," age 13, from the Child Study and Treatment Center in Tacoma:
Abusive Dad
My mom told me about
This one day when I
was about 5.
My dad used to throw my
sister against the wall.
But I was unborn, how
could I get out and help her.
I couldn't help her
at all. There wasn't any
way I could help her at all.
"Some kids are extremely insightful but helpless in dealing with their problems," Gold said.
The Pongo Publishing Teen Writing Project is Gold's non-profit organization. Recognition was slow to build since Pongo's launch 1992, but in the last several years Gold's efforts have been honored by The Windermere Foundation, Northwest Bookfest, Starbucks Foundation and others. At the Bumbershoot 2000 Bookfair, Gold and Pongo Publishing were handed the award for "Most Significant Contribution by a Press or Individual."
Gold, married with an 18-year-old daughter, could be doing other things with his time
Instead, in a culture where human value is often judged by earning potential and production capacity, Richard Gold is reaching out to lost, marginalized youth, trying to help them find a voice in which to address and understand their terrible plight.
"I feel that there's precious little control in life in what you get, but there is in what you give," Gold said.
Taking responsibility for what happens
Born in Newton, Mass. in 1948, Gold earned his English degree at Yale in 1970, a time of political and cultural upheaval. Gold experienced his share of uncertainty.
"I was a very confused person at that time," Gold recalled. With Gold's intensity and intelligence, the identity crisis was deeply felt, providing, perhaps, impetus and insight for his future work with troubled youth.
After moving to San Francisco Gold went to work in a psychiatric hospital until the age of 30. The experience delivered a strong dose of reality for one not long out of college.
"Suddenly I was in the university of the self," Gold said. "I was directly exposed to what makes people tick." He found that poetry workshops "contributed to a profound process of helping kids get in touch with themselves and their situations."
After moving to Seattle in 1983, Gold went to work in the high-tech world. He'd been conducting his teen writing project for four years before he withdrew from his full-time work schedule in 1996.
"It begins with finding a voice," Gold said of his workshops. "It begins with listening. It's amazing what can be accomplished just by listening."
Here's "Mya," age 15, from the Echo Glen Children's Center:
Tears Shatter
At night when I'm all alone
I cry softly in the corner of my room
As the tears turn into glass
As they shatter on the floor!
I fall into the bottomless pit!
The hard-ass thug turned
Into the wimpy rag doll
Now as the glass cuts my legs
I get high and slowly die
Poetry is unique, Gold said: It creates a place to stand back from one's situation, to evaluate it and to externalize experience. Publishing the results also helps build self-esteem, he added.
"I use poetry to see a part of themselves they've been unable to share and examine," Gold said. "They go to the difficult places in human experience."
Just after working with one group of young patients, Gold noted, he was told that three kids had broken through in their therapy because of his workshops.
Sometimes Gold has to hop quickly erected barricades.
"One kid said, 'I'm too angry at the staff to write,'" Gold recalled. "I said, 'Why don't you write about that?'"
He also remembers a 14-year-old girl who challenged him with: "You probably think we're just a bunch of crying kids."
Gold suggested otherwise.
"There's a big secret you don't know," Gold said. "Adults are dealing with the same issues you are. How am I loved? Adults are looking to be validated in this world, too."
In fact, Gold said the one universal question his students ask, even with their lives hanging out over the edge, is no different than the abiding adult question: "What is the meaning of life?"
Richard Gold, in his life and work, offers a plausible answer.
Richard Gold will read his poetry, including work from his recently published "The Puppet Odyssey, An Adult Epic on a Small Scale," published by Black Heron Press, Friday, Jan. 23, 7 p.m. at Lottie Motts Coffee Shop, 4900 Rainier Ave. S. in Columbia City. Poets Jack Litewka, Martha Silano and David Hecker are also on the bill.
