He published "The Swimmers and Other Selected Poems" (Oxford and Scribners) in 1971. He lectured at Greensboro for two weeks in 1970 and 1971 and at Harvard for four days in 1971. He was earning as much as he could by lecturing because the annuity his brother Ben left him would expire after his death. He had to cancel his Hopwood Awards Lecture at the University of Michigan in 1972 when he was hospitalized at the Vanderbilt Hospital for ten days with bronchitis and emphysema; Caroline Gordon substituted for him.