Mike Tyler is a non-academic, post-beat American poet. He first became known during the 1990s poetry revival centered on the

Nuyorican Poets Café The Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorkers) Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in Alphabet City, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip ...

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 ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

. His paternal grandfather is the educator

Ralph W. Tyler Ralph W. Tyler (1902–1994) 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 t ...

, Sr. He attended Stuyvesant High School and was a student of the writer

Frank McCourt Francis McCourt (August 19, 1930July 19, 2009) was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book '' Angela's Ashes'', a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood. Early life and education Frank ...

. 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. MikeTylerResidentPoet1994-2002

He has been cited as an influence on the musician

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. The artist

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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 James Newell Osterberg Jr. (born April 21, 1947), known professionally as Iggy Pop, is an American singer, musician, songwriter and actor. Called the " Godfather of Punk", he was the vocalist and lyricist of proto-punk band The Stooges, who w ...

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 Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

Is Dead” (Good) on

BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

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 A coffee table book, also known as a cocktail table book, is an oversized, usually hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a table intended for use in an area in which one entertains guests and from which it can serve to inspire conver ...

of the same name. He recreated the James Brown Hardest Working Man in Show Business Routine while doing a poetry reading. Noted UK Journalist

AA Gill Adrian Anthony Gill (28 June 1954 – 10 December 2016) was a British journalist, critic, and author. Best known for his food and travel writing, he was also a television critic, was restaurant reviewer of ''The Sunday Times'', wrote for '' Van ...

in the London Sunday Times was bemused by a Mike Tyler performance at London's

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA ...

(ICA): “He had not endeared himself to us. I mean this is the ICA, it’s

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, 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 Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works includ ...

out of Beavis and Butt-Head ...” 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

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.Café Society: The New Guerrilla Poets Act Out at the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Village Voice, March 24, 1992

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tyler, Mike Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American male poets