At the age of 11 Leyb left school to be apprenticed to a bootmaker and as a participant in "revolutionary activities", he was arrested twice while still in his teens.
Writing in the cadences of ordinary speech, he formed a group of poets called Di Yunge ("the Young").
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Leib's sound poems drew renewed attention to the Yiddish language through their skillful use of alliteration and repetition.
His reputation continued to grow after his death, when his collected work was published: Lider un Baladn (Songs and Ballads) in 1955 and Sonetn (Sonnets) in 1961.
Lider un Baladn was reprinted in 1963 with parallel Hebrew translations by Shimshon Meltzer, and an introduction by Itzik Manger.