John Thomas Idlet
| John Thomas Idlet | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 31, 1930 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | March 29, 2002 (aged 71) Westwood, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Congestive heart failure |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Spouse(s) | Philomene Long |
| Website | www.raven-productions.com |
John Thomas Idlet (John Thomas) (December 31, 1930 – March 29, 2002) was an American Beat poet who wrote sporadically and had an aversion to publishing his work. Charles Bukowski called him "the best unread poet in America."
John Thomas Idlet was born in Baltimore in 1930, the son of a teacher and World War I veteran who claimed to have invented the "double header" ice-cream cone. His father later committed suicide. Thomas attended Loyola College and described being "poisoned by Thomas Wolfe at an early age". After school, he considered entering the priesthood, but instead served in the Air Force during the Korean War, working as cryptographer due to his very high IQ. He was a huge man; 6 feet and 4 inches tall, and 300 pounds, the writer John Arthur Maynard described him "a cut-down version of Paul Bunyan – huge bones, huge ribcage, menacing brow, and beard". After his discharge in 1954, he married, had children and worked as a taxi driver, psychiatric orderly and city worker, while writing never completed novels. Despite a hatred of computers, he later became a computer programmer. He required time off following a truck accident, in which he broke his ankle. During his convalescence, he began to write and grew a beard, which he refused to shave off when he returned to work. As a result he was fired from his job, and was forced to work mixing powders and cleaning vats in his wife's lover's paint factory. Having read Lawrence Lipton's book Holy Barbarians (1959), Thomas sold his books for $20, abandoned his family, and hitchhiked to California. A driver of a Cadillac picked him up outside Pittsburgh and took him to Beverly Hills. Thomas took a bus to Venice Beach, where he lived for the rest of his life.
At Venice Beach Thomas worked as the manager and chef of the Gas House, a project which aimed to provide free meals to poets and artists who were living rent-free at the Grand Hotel Menus were planned based on the amount of money gathered in a gallon jar by tourists who had ogled the beatniks during the day. Ingenuity was needed, and Thomas used cheap fish, and "filet mignon", which as actually horse meat bought from a local pet store. Thomas declared himself a writer, but when the poet Maurice Lacy asked what specifically he wrote, he replied unthinkingly, "I'm a poet". As a result he was obliged to write some poems, and was learned much about the craft from the poet Stuart Perkoff. Poetry came more easily than the novels, but even poetry was a struggle for the writer, and "NOT writing and deep inability to write became his central theme if not celebrity". As he wrote in "Apologia"
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