SHMUEL KOTLER (SAMUEL CUTLER)

SHMUEL KOTLER (SAMUEL CUTLER) (b. ca. 1885)

            He was a poet, born in Kurshan (Kuršėnai), Lithuania.  In his youth he emigrated to the United States.  He began publishing poetry in D. Frishman’s Hador (The generation) and in Yiddish in Forverts (Forward).  He contributed to the poetry collections: Frayhayt (Freedom) (London, Geneva, New York); Di fraye shtunde (The free hour); and Dos naye leben (The new life); among others.  His work also appeared in: M. Basin’s Finf hundert yor yidishe poezye (500 years of Yiddish poetry) (New York, 1917); and Nakhmen Mayzil’s Amerike in yidishn vort (America in Yiddish) (New York, 1955).  He translated Maxim Gorky’s Amerika (America [original: V Amerike (In America)]) (Boston, n.d.), 74 pp.  His poems were, in the words of Yoyel Entin, “of a Jewish idyllic and somewhat social character.”  He was a promising poet, but soon he left literature behind and became a businessman in Detroit.

Sources: Yoyel Entin, Idishe poetn (Yiddish poets), vol. 2 (New York, 1927), pp. 307-9; Y. Khaykin, Yidishe bleter in amerike (Yiddish newspapers in America) (New York, 1946), p. 196.

Berl Cohen