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Accompanied by Fernando de los Ríos, the poet departs for New York, via Paris and London. In Paris they visit Mathilde Pomès and in London they stop to see Salvador de Madariaga. On 19 JUNE they board the Olympic in Southhampton, and arrive a week later in New York. There they are received by Ángel del Río, Gabriel García Maroto, León Felipe and José Camprubí. Federico takes a room in Furnald Hall of Columbia University and registers for a course in English. He reencounters Philip Cummings and Campbell Hackforth-Jones, whom he had met at the Residencia de Estudiantes, and Mildred Adams, whom he had met in Granada. León Felipe publishes a review of Romancero gitano in the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. In AUGUST FGL writes “El rey de Harlem” and “1910 (Intermedio)”, two of the first poems written for what was to become Poeta en Nueva York. The magazine Alhambra, directed by Ángel Flores in New York, publishes two romances (ballads) translated into English and several photographs by the poeta. He makes friends with Henry Herschel Brickell, the literary critic of the New York Herald. He goes to Eden Mills, Vermont, to spend a few days at the home of Philip Cummings. At the end of AUGUST he spends some time at the summer home of Ángel del Río in Bushnellsville, in the Catskill Mountains. He also visits Federico de Onís in Newburgh. On 20 SEPTEMBER he is back in New York, now staying in John Jay Hall at Columbia. He writes the film script Viaje a la luna, which he plans to produce with the collaboration with Emilio Armero of Mexico. He writes the poem “Infancia y muerte”. Friendship with John Crow and Francis C. Hayes, and acquaintance with poet Hart Crane. OCTOBER the Wall Street crash. In DECEMBER his sister Concha marries Manuel Fernández Montesinos, in Granada.
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In JANUARY, Federico leaves John Jay Hall to share a flat with a friend from the Residencia de Estudiantes, José Antonio Rubio Sacristán, who has just arrived in New York. At Vassar College he presents the conference “El patetismo de la canción de cuna española”. He gives a speech in honor of La Argentina, who has just made her debut in New York, celebrated with a banquet at the Cosmopolitan Club. In February Ignacio Sánchez Mejías and La Argentinita arrive. García Lorca presents a conference about bullfighting given by Sánchez Mejías at the Instituto de las Españas. He works with La Argentinita on harmonizing popular Spanish songs. He is invited by the Hispano-Cubana Cultural Institution to give a series of talks about Havana and other Cuban cities. The Instituto de las Españas pays tribute to him, and he gives the conference La mecánica de la poesía. After travelling in train to Tampa, Florida, he takes the steamboat Cuba to Havana, where he arrives on 6 MARCH and is greeted by his old friend José María Chacón y Calvo, Cuban poet Juan Marinello, and journalist Rafael Suárez Solís. He gets to know Antonio Quevedo and María Muñoz, a couple who are friends of Manuel de Falla. From MARCH to APRIL he gives several conferences in the Teatro Principal de la Comedia in Havana: La mecánica de la poesía; Paraíso cerrado para muchos, jardines abiertos para pocos; Canciones de cuna españolas; La imagen poética de don Luis de Góngora; and La arquitectura del cante jondo. He works on the play El público. Friendship with the Loynaz family, whose house he visits nearly every day, and to whom he reads El público. In the company of writer Lydia Cabrera, an acquaintance from Madrid, he attends a “ñáñiga” ceremony. Conferences in Caibarién, presented by José María Chacón y Calvo, and in Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. A reception in his honor in Santiago de las Vegas. He writes “Son de negros en Cuba”, and “Oda a Walt Whitman”, as part of Poeta en Nueva York. MAY his friends García Maroto and Adolfo Salazar arrive in Havana. Friendship with the writer from Guatemala Luis Cardoza Aragón; and Federico meets Nicolás Guillén and José Lezama Lima. He is admitted to a clinic to have some warts removed. JUNE a farewell dinner in his honor at the Hotel Bristol, organized by Revista de Avance. On 12 June he boards the Manuel Arnús which, after stopping in New York, sails to Cádiz, where it docks on 30 June.
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De izqda. a drcha.: un pianista de Hawai, una muchacha hindú bailarina, María Antonieta Rivas Blair y Federico García Lorca, paseando por la Universidad de Columbia. Nueva York, otoño de 1929.
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Federico García Lorca en el porche de la casa de Ángel del Río, en Shandaken, Catskill Mountains, Nueva York, 1929.
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Federico García Lorca, ca. 1930.
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Federico García Lorca y José María Chacón y Calvo. Cuba, 1930.
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Federico García Lorca junto a un vendedor de periódicos. Cuba, 1930.
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Federico García Lorca en el barco en que regresó a España. La Habana, junio de 1930.
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