Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems
"For the past fifty years Paul Zimmer has been writing poems about violence and cruelty as they appear in the schoolyard, in the daily experience of adults, and in the Nevada desert where he witnessed atomic bomb tests as a G.I. in a foxhole. His mouthpiece character, 'Zimmer' (with his gang of blue-collar cronies), is almost confessional at times, albeit with a grand sense of humor that tempers the bad news and convinces us that even in our worst moments we are not unique and therefore not alone. Who but Zimmer has lately studied the sky with such attention? Who else writes poems as accessible, and conveys our common stumbling with such understanding and forgiveness? If Americans looked for answers in real books, Zimmer’sCrossing to Sunlight Revisitedwould be riding in a lot of back pockets."--Brendan Galvin, author ofHabitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005