The Anglo-American poet Thom Gunn (1929–2004) was also a major influence: "the honest treatment of the poetic material at hand, not slipping into rhetorical or poetic postures, inflating subject matter or dodging difficulty," Kleinzahler explained in an interview in The Paris Review in the fall of 2007.

A passionate blues lover, Kleinzahler wrote a music column for the San Diego Reader for many years.

[2] He has lived in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco but has retained strong ties to his old home base in New Jersey.

Kleinzahler is the author of ten books of poetry, including The Strange Hours Travelers Keep and Sleeping It Off in Rapid City.

He has also published a non-fiction work, Cutty, One Rock (Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained).