This work was published posthumously in 1940, but written between 1929-1930 in New York, during Lorca's time as a student at Columbia University. Poeta en Nueva York showcases undeniable poetic surrealist inspirations, yet is rather more gloomy than most of the author's poems . He speaks of the New York ravaged by poverty after the crash of 1929. Lorca writes about loneliness and despair in a nightmare city where oppressed beings roam amid their own misery. Many of the poems are dedicated to black Americans, particularly those who lived in Harlem. The poems conclude with two odes, one dedicated to the father of American poetry, Walt Whitman, and two waltzes to celebrate the departure from New York, arriving in Havana, and the meeting with the lively Cuban music that transports the poet, and with him the reader, to the gates of a much brighter place: the South.