Mike Tyler
Encyclopedia
He first became known during the 1990s poetry revival centered around the Nuyorican Poets Café
Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
in New York City. He has been dubbed the “most dangerous poet in America” because he once broke an arm while doing a reading.
Tyler was born in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
. His paternal grandfather is the educator Ralph W. Tyler
Ralph W. Tyler
Ralph W. Tyler was an American educator who worked in the field of assessment and evaluation. He served on or advised a number of bodies that set guidelines for the expenditure of federal funds and influenced the underlying policy of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Tyler...
, Sr. He attended Stuyvesant High School and was a student of the writer Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt
Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....
. He dropped out.
From 1994 to 2002 he was the poet-in-residence at the artist decorated Carlton Arms Hotel in New York City living in a room with a felt rhino. A plaque (cardboard) celebrating his stay currently hangs on the door of the room. His book, “From Colorado to Georgia” is available in the rooms of the hotel.
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
. The artist Banksy
Banksy
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter.His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique...
has stenciled Tyler’s line “only the ridiculous survive” outside of London’s Paddington Station. The line comes from Tyler’s series of six poems with the same name, “The Complete Breakdown of Everything.”
Tyler’s writing style has been described as terse, epigrammatic epiphanies. He is concerned with language, both beautiful and otherwise, as a political activity, and the “muddle-class” as a group robbed of language, and so robbed of a voice. He is known for his poem “The Most Beautiful Word in the American Language” (Resist).
“The Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...
of Poetry”, his high-octane physical reading style has been controversial, leading to him once receiving a zero at a poetry slam. The judge said he could not hear the poetry through his antics. Tyler responded in his poem “Suggestion Box.” If you didn’t move around so much/I could listen to your poetry/If I didn’t move around so much/you wouldn’t even bother with/you couldn’t listen to my poetry/you just wouldn’t listen/to my poetry.
He performed his one word poem “Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
Is Dead” (Good) on BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio, entering to introductory music (“He’s My Thing” by Babes in Toyland) longer than the poem itself.
He appeared full-frontally nude performing his poem Trial By Ice for the PBS Series, The United States of Poetry (is it o.k. to yell fire/at a fire). The performance was cut from the show, but Tyler did appear completely naked in stills from the program in the coffee table book
Coffee table book
A coffee table book is a hardcover book that is intended to sit on a coffee table or similar surface in an area where guests sit and are entertained, thus inspiring conversation or alleviating boredom. They tend to be oversized and of heavy construction, since there is no pressing need for...
of the same name.
He recreated the James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
Hardest Working Man in Show Business Routine while doing a poetry reading.
Noted UK Journalist AA Gill in the London Sunday Times was bemused by a Mike Tyler performance at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
(ICA): “He had not endeared himself to us. I mean this is the ICA, it’s London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, this audience is so cool the bar doesn’t even bother stocking ice. And there’s this geezer claiming to be a poet, I mean he hasn’t even got sunglasses on. Anyway he starts whining his poem, which is sort of Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
out of Beavis and Butt-Head
Beavis and Butt-Head
Beavis and Butt-head is an American animated television series created by Mike Judge. The series originated from Frog Baseball, a 1992 short film by Judge. After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the concept. Beavis and Butt-head originally aired from March 8, 1993 to November 28, 1997...
...” Gill went on to quote a short Mike Tyler poem in full. Just before/the end of the world/somebody said/to somebody else/”Hey, look, it’s not like it’s the end of the world”.
The most infamous act of Tyler’s career occurred on Friday November 30, 1992. Dying to read a poem at the Nuyorican Poets Café
Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
but with a long line ahead of him, Tyler took his poem outside to 3rd Street. He used the flatbed of a truck for a stage and paced and prowled. He didn’t recite the poem, he exorcised it. He sprung to the top of a wire fence, then dived to the sidewalk landing on his left arm. Which broke at the elbow.