entre california y coyoacán (1960-1963)

In the summer of 1960,Cernuda moved to California invited by the University of California, Los Angeles. The visit was organized by Carlos-Peregrín Otero, a young scholar who had just submitted the first Ph.D. dissertation written about Cernuda. The stay was a good experience for Cernuda and he returned to writing poetry after a long period of inactivity. Poems dating from this period (Desolación de la Quimera) reflected the troubled relationship with his generation, and his clear determination not to ever return to Spain.

Cernuda traveled to California to teach as visiting professor at San Francisco State College, 1961-1962, and the following year at the University of California at Los Angeles. He did not like his stay in Los Angeles, even tough he rented a nice little apartment on the beachfront, but he found the relationship with members of the Spanish Department unbearable. However, the publication of Desolación de la Quimera at the end of 1962, and a tribute in La Caña Gris, a Spanish magazine, gave him some solace.

In June 1963, Cernuda returned to Coyoacán. Five months later, in the morning of November 5, he died of a heart attack. The next day, surrounded by no more than eight or nine people, the poet was buried in the Panteón Jardín, Mexico City.