Chris Franke is an American experimental poet from

Charlottesville, Virginia Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia, United States. It is the county seat, seat of government of Albemarle County, Virginia, Albemarle County, which surrounds the ...

. His work includes

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poe ...

performance poetry Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a Performance art, performance before an audience. It covers a variety of styles and genres. History The phenomenon of performance poetry, a kind of poetry specifically m ...

, and various forms of conventional poetry. He has performed as a member of the ''Endangered Species Trio'' as a reader of his poetry to harp and flute accompaniment. His poems have also been included in the paintings of other artists. Franke has performed sound poetry readings and more conventional poetry readings in Northeast Ohio for decades. His first book of poetry, ''Title'', was published in 1969 by the

Cleveland State University Cleveland State University (CSU) is a public research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1964 and opened for classes in 1965 after acquiring the entirety of Fenn College, a private school that had been in oper ...

Press and featured a number of concrete pieces. He coined the terms "flip words" and "toe-faced words" to describe mirror reflection words and puddle reflection words respectively. He also coined the terms "typoons" to describe free-form (non-linear)

emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...

s he has had in print since ''Title'', "articles" to describe visual poetry collages, and has extended the meaning of the word "versicle" to also mean very small books of poetry, particularly concrete poetry.''The Protext Primer'', Will Napoli, ed., 1st and 2nd editions, 2007, 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions, 2008, Protext Press

References

Living people American male poets English-language poets Year of birth missing (living people) Writers from Charlottesville, Virginia Visual poets {{US-poet-stub