“After the Fire: A Writer Finds His Place.” Review of After the Fire. Virginia Quarterly Review 78, no. 4 (Autumn, 2002): 123-124. A review of Zimmer’s memoirs that celebrates the volume’s open and honest portrayal of a young man’s awakening to the complex nature of life.

Aldan, Daisy. “The Words of the Tribe.” Poetry 118, no. 1 (April, 1971): 35. Aldan suggests that there is a universal language inherent in Zimmer’s poetry—that the incidents and emotions Zimmer describes are common to all of humanity. She sees Zimmer as giving a voice and a language to human experience.

Gery, John. “The Atomic Test Poems of Paul Zimmer.” War, Literature, and the Arts 6, no. 1 (1994): 1-19. Gery is fascinated with Zimmer’s descriptions of his stint in the U.S. Army and his involvement with the early nuclear test program. He studies the bleakness of the young soldier’s experience of war and deprivation as well as his anxiety about the increasing possibility of nuclear annihilation.

Johnson, Douglas S. “’The Longing Season’: Love and Mortality in Paul Zimmer’s Big Blue Train.” Ohioana Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1995): 167-70. Johnson observes a common thread behind Zimmer’s depictions of love affairs and death—the overriding awareness of loss and the inherent emptiness of desire.

Morgenthaler, Eric. “Buses Prove to Be the Perfect Vehicle for a Poet’s Work.” Wall Street Journal, October 17, 1975. Morgenthaler details the everyday nature of Zimmer’s writing. Zimmer’s poems are universal in their appeal and accessibility, so it is telling to discover that Zimmer tended to write his poetry, or at least develop his ideas, in the midst of everyday life.

Wallace, Ronald. God Be with the Clown: Humor in American Poetry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984. Wallace’s volume, although it deals with humorous verse in American poetry in general, sees Zimmer’s poetry as infused with the gentle, self-effacing humor that is common among American poets but at the same time takes the expression of laughter to even more creative heights. Wallace is convincing when he describes humor as the keystone to understanding American poetry.

Zimmer, Paul. “The Holy Words: A Conversation with Paul Zimmer.” Interview by Stan Sanvel Rubin. In The Post-confessionals: Conversations with American Poets of the Eighties, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, Judith Kitchen, and Rubin. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1989. The interviewer calls Zimmer a “postconfessional” poet writing in the tradition of Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Sexton, but also asks the poet to describe where, historically, he sees himself in the context of American verse.