During Dave's years at the Ransom Center, he continued to write poems, book reviews, and essays, to produce Prickly Pear books, and to translate the poetry of Enrique Lihn, and after retiring, that of Nicanor Parra. He and Luis Ramos-García worked together on the bilingual anthology of Texas poets, Washing the Cow's Skull, published under the Prickly Pear imprint in 1981 and winner of a Border Regional Library Association award. He also worked on his book-length poem, Austin, published in 1985. His collection entitled María's Poems would win an Austin Book Award in 1987 and in 1996 Texan Jazz, his first of four books on the music, would be published by the University of Texas Press. 

In 1984 Dave was invited to write an essay for The Texas Humanist, a magazine published in Austin by the Texas Committee for the Humanities. He joined eight other Texas writers who contributed their views on Texas literature. Each of the nine writers was depicted by a wonderful likeness drawn by an artist identified only as Foster. 

The artist who signed him- or herself as Foster captured accurately each of the nine writers in the December 1984 issue of The Texas Humanist. Since Dave knew in person or had seen the other writers, he was aware of how well the artist had succeeded in rendering all nine heads and faces. 

Begun in 1944, The Library Chronicle ended publication in early 1996. Thanks to Dr. Ricardo Romo, UT Vice Provost and a fellow member of the Texas-Chile exchange group of 1965, Dave was tapped to serve as coordinator for the new Freshman Seminars Program. He had taught a seminar in 1996, the first year of the program, and in addition to coordinating the seminars he would teach one seminar and also teach literature classes for the Division of Rhetoric and Writing. He continued to teach a night class at the community college, before his retirement in 2003, after 25 years. In 2006 he would retire from UT after 30 years, serving during that period as an assistant professor, editor, coordinator, and senior lecturer.

After Dr. Romo became the President of UT-San Antonio, Dave continued to coordinate the Freshman Seminars, teach a seminar, and teach literature classes for Rhetoric and Writing. In spring 2006, he was approved to teach a course in the new Maymester program, which was for study abroad for credit at UT. Dave's seminar was on Chilean poetry, and his seven students traveled with him and María to Chile for the five-week course in May and June. This brought full circle his career in higher education that had begun in Chile, as had the love of his life.

Dave's Maymester class in Chile. From left to right: Andrew Lara, Diana Meléndez, Gabriela Orta, Lucila Castellano, Ashley Thomas, Alvaro Corral, and Karen Villarreal. 

During Dave's freshman seminar course in 2006, his UT students visited with Nicanor Parra in his home in Las Cruces. At that time, María was unable to join Dave and his students for the Parra visit, but in 2009, she and Dave would spend a day with the antipoet in his beach home in Las Cruces.

In 2009, Host Publications in Austin issued Dave's translation of Nicanor Parra's Discursos de sobremesa, as After-Dinner Declarations. The book won the Texas Institute of Letters Soeurette Diehl Fraser translation award for 2011.

Also in 2009, Dave's memoir, Harbingers of Books to Come, appeared from Wings Press.

In 2019, Dave's collection of twenty essays on Chilean poetry was published by Editorial A Contracorriente at North Carolina State University. Translated from Dave's English by friends, fellow writers, and his niece Jéssica Maralla, with the exception of three articles that he wrote himself in Spanish, this work represents his more than 50 years of interest in and promotion of Chilean poetry. The cover photograph is of Nicanor Parra at age 100 just outside his home in Las Cruces.