Please check out my poem about shotputters and discus throwers on VERSE-VIRTUAL. (Much thanks to editor Jim Lewis.) www.verse-virtual.org/2025/Novembe...
Leonard Kress Verse-Virtual November 2025
The poetry of Leonard Kress
verse-virtual.org
Leonard Kress
@lkress.bsky.social
Poet, fiction writer, translator (Polish). PAN TADEUSZ by Adam Mickiewicz on website: www.leonardkress.com Craniotomy Sestinas (2021) Poppy Seeds (2023) Foxholes (2025)
At the Philadelphia Orchestra today with Anya Kress. Pieces by Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Jennifer Higdon (BGSU connection), Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducting. And this otherworldly rendition of a Finnish folk song by guest violinist Lisa Batiashvili… www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWW9...
Evening Song (Riihimäki) / Lisa Batiashvili · Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks · Hrůša
YouTube video by Fan of Lisa Batiashvili
youtube.com
Please check out my poem "Time Out of Mind" on the Kent State University. "Poets for Science" site. Fitting that a poem about higher math would be a sestina. poetsforscience.org/time-out-of-...
Time Out of Mind - Poets for Science
Everything you think you know about time is wrong. You imagine it’s just another dimension, no different from the other three. And space (as Minkowski argued a century ago) is in love with time, fused...
poetsforscience.org
Please check out my new poem (as well as the other fine work) in the new issue of MINYAN. (Special thanks to editor Liz Marlow.) It should be easy enough, just choose a psalm, any psalm, say #19 for starters… www.minyanmag.com/leonardkress...
How Poets Pray by Leonard Kress | MINYAN
How Poets Pray by Leonard Kress from Issue Sixteen
minyanmag.com
Please check out my short story, "Rubies," in the new issue of Litro. Clearly, a quarter century living in the Midwest affects one's writing... www.litromagazine.com/usa/2025/06/...
Rubies - Litro Magazine USA
A ruby earring, a mall, a buried past. “Rubies” is a tender, aching story about abortion, motherhood, and Midwestern memory.
litromagazine.com
Always important to commemorate Bastille Day—equally necessary to note “The Day After Bastille Day.” Please check out my poem published in Helix… helixmagazine.org/2022/03/16/t...
The Day After Bastille Day || Leonard Kress
It’s quiet here, where the river broadens, by the dropped drawbridge and the distant eight-girl crews, coasting to the finish line, forming a bar graph that could represent favored activities (list…
helixmagazine.org
As always, George Eliot out-Kants them all...(from Chapter 27, MIDDLEMARCH).
Please check out my poem, “STRING BEAN MORITIFICATION” in the new issue of Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly. (You would be too.) stickfigurepoetry.com/issue-18/#st...
Issue #18
Lead Pipe Replacement Project by James Croal Jackson C Street by Azure Brandi Woods by Pulkita Anand Thoughts About Golf While Reading William Blake by Charlie Brice Post-midlife Crisis by Er…
stickfigurepoetry.com
Much thanks to JP Laughing Bear for including my poem, “Orpheus Listens to Black Orpheus” on his website, versedaily.org. And I urge you to subscribe to his substack for a new poem daily. (This is from my new collection FOXHOLES.) www.versedaily.org/2025/orpheus...
Welcome to Verse Daily!
Verse Daily, a quality web anthology of poetry. A poem a day, along with our complete archives, and poem selections from the web.
versedaily.org
Please check out my poem, "A Night at the Opera" in the new issue of AIOTB (As It Ought To Be). Fine poems in this issue, edited by Chase Dimock. asitoughttobemagazine.com/leonard-kres...
Leonard Kress: “A Night at the Opera”
A Night at the Opera(Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen)We have such great seats at the operain the first balcony and the first thingmy wife asks–to switch places becausethe woman’s perf…
asitoughttobemagazine.com
Kent State shootings--45 years ago, May 5, 1970. (Photo from the Philadelphia Bulletin of the protest at Temple U on North Broad Steet. After breaking into the National Guard Armory and before a National Guard tank broke down in the middle of the street. Yes, that me--all fired up--on the right...)
Battle of Grunwald--(1410) between the villages of Grunwald and Tannenberg n northeastern Poland that marked a major Polish-Lithuanian victory over the Knights of the Teutonic Order. (Defeating the Nazis early)
Kościół Mariacki, Kraków, Polska. (Altarpiece by Wit Stwosz)
My very unorthodox way of marking Passover—in lieu of a Seder. These two flashes—and featuring Elijah, the invisible, invited, longed for dinner guest and in this case fully embodied…. anotherchicagomagazine.net/2024/03/12/f...
Flash Fiction by Leonard Kress
The synagogue of my youth wandered throughout the city, from the basement of the Methodist church on the Manayunk hills to the East Falls nursing home…
anotherchicagomagazine.net
RIP Val Kilmer, forever Jim Morrison of the Doors. Perhaps the confusion is appropriate and necessary.... plumepoetry.com/not-the-way-...
Not the Way it Was - Plume
Not the Way It Was Today I overheard a conversation about the 1969 incident when Jim Morrison exposed himself onstage at the Coconut Grove in Miami and for a good half-hour I was sure I had been at th...
plumepoetry.com
My new poetry collection has finally arrived—FOXHOLES. If anyone out there would like a review copy or simply a copy to read, please message me with your mailing address. Here’s a sample poem from the book.
'It’s the one I’m looking at this morning: the boy bleeding / into the snow painted over with slabs of cheese and meat; / the boy being led away from parents who appear / to offer his sister in his place painted over as a swan' 'The Feast of the Holy Innocents' by Maurice Riordan
'The Feast of the Holy Innocents' by Maurice Riordan | Original poem | The TLS
28 December 2023 On the good rug with the Bible open I’m learning to read. The words are hard, I turn to the pictures: Belshazzar’s Feast, the Golden Calf, Holofernes, Moses Smashing the Tablets,…
buff.ly
Not half-bad--this description of the Superbowl (via Robert Graves' I CLAUDIUS).
My Story, the first page at least, "DISPLACED PERSONS" in this Ohio Writers' Association collection, Should This Book Be Banned? Given the current state of affairs, the title of the story would get it banned. It purports to be about living in Kensington (Philly) when I lived there...
How do artists sustain themselves year after year? Two recent books ask a wide variety of people—dancers, writers, filmmakers, architects—why they keep creating.
Are You an Artist?
The creative life is shrouded in mystery. Two new books try to discover what it takes.
nyer.cm
Pleased to announce the immanent publication of my new poetry collection--FOXHOLES (Moonstone Press). Coming any day now.
For International Holocaust Remembrance Day: This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gents („Proszę państwa do gazu”) by Tadeusz Borowski (1922-1951) drive.google.com/file/d/0B5do...
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.pdf
drive.google.com
Please check out my poem “Swordfish Mounted on the Paneled Rec-Room Wall.” Thanks to the editors at Poetry Catalog. These things may or my not have taken place in the suburbs of my adolescence. poetrycatalog.com/swordfish-mo...
Swordfish Mounted On The Paneled Rec-Room Wall, By: Leonard Kress - Poetry Catalog
Swordfish Mounted on the Paneled Rec-Room Wall, By: Leonard Kress: My girlfriend’s father hooked and hauled it aboard a chartered cabin
poetrycatalog.com
Was it ever really like this? Was the Village ever really like this? Is this something AI-generated? (from THE LAST AVANT-GARDE: The Making of the New York School of Poets by David Lehman)
I heard William Mathews read this poem in Ann Arbor in the late 90s. Hasn't diminished at all.... www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/poem-o...
Poem of the Day
Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.
poetryfoundation.org
Happy birthday to poet Charles Olson (b. Dec 27, 1910)—the one singular poet who lured me into the world of poetry. (Projective Verse, Human Universe, The Maximus Poems, Black Mountain….)
