Spain’s most famous poet, Federico García Lorca, wrote his last published work, Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York), during a yearlong trip he took to the U.S. and Cuba starting in June 1929. He never saw the collection in print. Lorca was executed by Francoist sympathizers in Granada on August 18, 1936, five weeks after he had submitted the manuscript to his editor, who subsequently fled with it to Mexico to escape the Spanish Civil War.
Among the questions left behind in the chaos was: What’s up with the references to Vermont in Poet in New York? The collection contains two sections with “Vermont” in their titles, which include the poems “Double Poem of Lake Eden,” “Living Sky” and others. Scholars knew Lorca had left New York City to spend 10 days on the shores of Lake Eden in August 1929 with one Philip Cummings of Hardwick, a supposed friend. But who was Cummings?
Independent researcher and writer Patricia Billingsley became so intrigued by these questions while living in western Massachusetts and working at Smith College that she did a deep dive into the two men’s biographies. The 74-year-old, now a resident of Newark, Del., spent 20 years researching the men and, it turned out, their three-year love affair.
“It was a puzzle that fell into my lap that I could just not let go of,” she said.
Cummings, who died in 1991, was a poet, too, Billingsley learned. He was born in Hardwick in 1906 and attended Hardwick Academy and two Florida colleges. During college in 1928, he did a summer language program in Madrid, where he and Lorca met. Their next meeting was a supposedly chance encounter on an overnight train from Madrid to Paris in June 1929. During that trip, Cummings invited Lorca to visit him in Vermont later that summer.
Billingsley’s book on that rendezvous, Lorca in Vermont: The Spanish Poet and His American Lover, was published in May by University of New Mexico Press and issued in Spanish translation by Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. The author has given talks in New York City, Granada and North Hero. Seven Days spoke to her ahead of her next one on Saturday, September 26, at Jeudevine Memorial Library in Hardwick.
How did Lorca’s stay in Vermont come to your attention?
It started while I was still employed at Smith College, in 2006. I had full library privileges there. I realized, Here’s this famous poet I know virtually nothing about. I decided to read Ian Gibson’s biography of him [Federico García Lorca: A Life]. Gibson talks about this young man from Vermont and their relationship as just this friendship, and a little about Lorca’s time at Lake Eden and the poems he wrote there.
But there was something about it I could not shake: How did this 21-year-old become friends with Lorca?
The other element was how Cummings had been dismissed in Lorca scholarship, as though he was just a young fan of Lorca’s. One person told me the only reason [Lorca] accepted the offer to come to Vermont was that he felt compelled out of politeness. I was trying to figure out all these pieces. Then I read his poems and plays.
Following his trip to Vermont, he went to the Catskills for three weeks. During that time he wrote more poems [in Poet in New York] that I believe were in large part about processing his time in Vermont and the course of their relationship.
What about their relationship comes through in Lorca’s Vermont poems?
It is my premise in the book that Federico had gone to Vermont in the hope that his relationship with Philip, which was already sexual, would turn into something more romantic. Lorca was 31 when he made this trip to the U.S.; he was ready for a more committed relationship. But he really misjudged Philip, who was 21, had just graduated from college and was about to head to St. Louis to teach languages.
This became very clear as the two spent time together. Federico was experiencing a great deal of anguish, but he wasn’t about to reveal that to Philip, so he poured it out in his poems. “Double Poem” is an anguished poem, a cry for the freedom to love openly whomever he wants to love.
You write in your epilogue that homophobia in Spain is the primary reason the Vermont episode remained unexamined for so long. When did Lorca scholars begin to acknowledge Lorca’s homosexuality?
The first mention of Lorca being gay was in the introduction to a 1955 translation of Poet in New York, which was first published in 1940. But there was no mention of Vermont, so no one had any concrete evidence of why Lorca was talking about Vermont in this collection.
The reception [of my book] in Spain has been so surprising to me in that people were grateful I’d written about Lorca as a gay man in such a matter-of-fact fashion. I am saying in the book that this is a fundamental part of his identity. It shaped his worldview and his work.
Did you meet any of Philip Cummings’ relatives?
I met several members of the family, but those interactions were sometimes difficult. I got to talk to people who had known Philip in his later years, including Gibson and other leading scholars and biographers. The most important was Dionisio Cañas, a Spanish poet who taught literature in New York City. In 1985, he and a group of friends went up to Lake Eden, found Cummings’ number in the phone book and cold-called him. There was this immediate connection between Philip and Dionisio. They were both gay men. Dionisio stayed for a weekend, and Philip told him the whole story of his life. Dionisio gave me copies of the notes that he took there.
Is the camp on Lake Eden still there?
Yes. It’s actually on the market at the moment. I got to know the previous owners, who allowed me to stay there several times. They sold it 10 years ago, and the new owner allowed me to stay also. They’re all so appreciative of its history. When they had to replace some of the siding, they had rounded clapboards made to match the existing ones. It’s a beautiful place. ➆
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Poet in Lake Eden | A new book explores Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s secret relationship with a Hardwick man nearly a century ago”
This article appears in September 23 • 2026.
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