Mike Tyler

Mike Tyler is a non-academic, post-beat American poet.[1]

Tyler in Manhattan, Spring 2009. by Shiori Kawasaki

He first became known during the 1990s poetry revival centered on the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City.[2] He has been dubbed the “most dangerous poet in America” because he once broke an arm while doing a reading.[3]

Tyler was born in Greenwich Village. His paternal grandfather is the educator Ralph W. Tyler, Sr. He attended Stuyvesant High School and was a student of the writer Frank McCourt. He dropped out.[4]

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.[5] 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.[6]

Tyler's door plaque at The Carlton Arms Hotel, Manhattan

He has been cited as an influence on the musician Beck.[7] The artist Banksy has stenciled Tyler's line “only the ridiculous survive” outside of London's Paddington Station.[8] The line comes from Tyler's series of six poems with the same name, “The Complete Breakdown of Everything.”[9]

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).[10]

“The Iggy Pop 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.[11]

He performed his one word poem “Nixon Is Dead” (Good) on BBC radio, entering to introductory music (“He’s My Thing” by Babes in Toyland) longer than the poem itself.[12] 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 of the same name.[13]

He recreated the James Brown Hardest Working Man in Show Business Routine while doing a poetry reading.[14]

Noted UK Journalist AA Gill in the London Sunday Times was bemused by a Mike Tyler performance at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA): “He had not endeared himself to us. I mean this is the ICA, it’s London, 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 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”.[15]

The most infamous act of Tyler's career occurred on Friday November 30, 1992. Dying to read a poem at the Nuyorican Poets Café 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.[16]