Leo Yankevich (30 October 1961 – 11 December 2018) was an American poet and the editor of The New Formalist.
Early life and education
Leo Yankevich grew up and attended high school in Farrell, Pennsylvania, a small steel town in western
Pennsylvania. He studied History and
Polish Studies at
Alliance College, Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, receiving a BA in 1984. Later that year he traveled to Poland on a fellowship from the Kosciuszko Foundation to attend Kraków's Jagiellonian University.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, he decided to settle permanently in Poland. Thereafter, he lived in Gliwice, an industrial city in Upper Silesia.[ Profile, the-chimaera.com; accessed October 21, 2014.]
Writing activities
Yankevich wrote poems in both traditional metre and in syllabics, and only occasionally in free verse. He was a prolific translator, having rendered into English poems by Mikhail Lermontov,
Georg Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stanisław Grochowiak, Czesław Miłosz,
Alexander Blok,
Leopold Staff,
Nikolay Gumilev, Bolesław Leśmian, and many others. He has a large internet presence with work published in scores of online publications, ranging from the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette[ Onion Snow, post-gazette.com; accessed October 21, 2014.] to
Poets Against War.
[ Poets Against The War Poem of the Month, poetsagainstthewar.org; accessed October 21, 2014.]
Personal life
Yankevich was married and had three sons.
Published works
Chapbooks
-
The Language of Birds; Pygmy Forest Press, 1994
-
Grief's Herbs (translations after the Polish of Stanisław Grochowiak); The Mandrake Press, 1995
-
The Gnosis of Gnomes; The Mandrake Press, 1995
-
Epistle from The Dark; The Mandrake Press, 1996
-
The Golem of Gleiwitz; The Mandrake Press, 1998
-
"Metaphysics" by Leo Yankevich, 2002
Books
-
The Unfinished Crusade; The Mandrake Press, 2000
-
The Last Silesian; The Mandrake Press, 2005
-
Tikkun Olam; Counter-Currents Publishing, 2012
-
Journey Late at Night: Poems & Translations; Counter-Currents Publishing, 2013
-
The Hypocrisies of Heaven: Poems New & Old: ; Counter-Currents Publishing, 2016
Further reading
Internet Archive's copies
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Internet Archive's copy of Leo Yankevich Poems at Poemhunter.com
