The first was Knoytn[6] (Candlewicks) in 1927;[7] The second, Unter der last[8] (Under the Yoke), in 1936,[9] and the third, Lider fun a midbarnik[10] (Songs of a Hermit) in 1954[11] for which The Jewish Book Council gave him The Harry Kovner Award as the best collection of Yiddish poetry of the year, in 1955.

(Alter—the old one) in following the custom among Ashkenazi Jews of renaming the eldest surviving son in event of a father's early demise as a way of asking the Angel of Death not to bother the family again; and Esselin, using the consonants in Solomon.

[9] Following the break up of a youthful marriage, Esselin became a journeyman carpenter, working for a time in one city after another until he saved enough to last a few weeks and then to hole up in a rented room to devour books from the library.

When he showed her a poem he had written, Di fodim fun gloibn (The Thread of Belief) she was so taken with it that she insisted on translating it into Polish and got it published in a local paper that covered the Polish-Jewish community.

[11] In 1926, Esselin and his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he spent the rest of his life, working as a carpenter in the daytime and composing his verse at night...although if an idea came to him on the job he would scribble it down during the lunch break.

On April 22, 1969, The Forward (Forverts) published an article by Yitzok Perlov "In Celebration of the Eightieth Birthday of Alter Esselin" which detailed the events of his career and evoked the eloquent bittersweet tone of his poetry.

Thirty years after his death, Mikhail Krutikov wrote a retrospective article in The Forward (Forverts) going over Esselin's life and celebrating his unique poetic voice.