Leo Yankevich

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pawel Niemczuk (talk | contribs) at 01:09, 24 May 2016 (→‎Writing activities: Polish diacritics). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Leo Yankevich
Born (1961-10-30) October 30, 1961 (age 62)
Sharon, Pennsylvania, U.S.
OccupationPoet, editor, translator
NationalityUnited States
Literary movementNew Formalism
Website
leoyankevich.com

Leo Yankevich (born October 30, 1961) is an American poet and the editor of The New Formalist.

He 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. Since then he has lived in Gliwice, an industrial city in Upper Silesia.[1]

Personal life

Yankevich is married and has three sons.

Writing activities

Yankevich writes poems in both traditional metre and in syllabics, and only occasionally in free verse. He is 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[2] to Poets Against War.[3]

Quotes

Nothing remains after philosophy but physical reality, be it dew on a lovely girl's maidenhood, or twisted wreckage after a tank battle.'[4]

Published works

Chapbooks

  • The Language of Birds; Pygmy Forest Press, 1994 ISBN 0-944550-39-8
  • 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 ISBN 83-904541-1-4
  • The Golem of Gleiwitz; The Mandrake Press, 1998 ISBN 83-904541-6-5
  • "Metaphysics" by Leo Yankevich, 2002

Books

  • The Unfinished Crusade; The Mandrake Press, 2000 ISBN 83-904541-9-X
  • The Last Silesian; The Mandrake Press, 2005 ISBN 0-9708219-2-1
  • Tikkun Olam; Counter-Currents Publishing, 2012 ISBN 978-1-935965-38-1
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems & Translations; Counter-Currents Publishing, 2013 ISBN 978-1935965824

References

  1. ^ Profile, the-chimaera.com; accessed October 21, 2014.
  2. ^ Onion Snow, post-gazette.com; accessed October 21, 2014.
  3. ^ Poets Against The War Poem of the Month, poetsagainstthewar.org; accessed October 21, 2014.
  4. ^ quoted in An Interview with Leo Yankevich, Formalist Poetry News, October 2007

Further reading