In 1977 Dorn accepted a professorship at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he taught for the rest of his life, directing the Creative Writing Program and editing the literary newspaper "Rolling Stock" (motto: “If It Moves Print It”) with his wife Jennifer. During the 1990s, after a teaching exchange visit to Paul Valery University in Montpellier inspired an interest in the Cathars of Southern France, he started working on "Languedoc Variorum: A Defense of Heresy and Heretics". He was also writing another long narrative poem "Westward Haut". During the last two and a half years of his life, he wrote the poems for the posthumously published "Chemo Sabe", reporting on his cancer treatments. Dorn's main work, his magnum opus, is ""Gunslinger"". "Gunslinger" is a long poem in five sections. Part 1 was first published in 1968, and the final complete text appeared in 1974. Other important publications include "The Collected Poems: 1956-1974" (1975), "Recollections of Gran Apacheria" (1975), "Abhorrences" (1989), "High West Rendezvous: A Sampler" (1997), and "[Way More West: New and Selected Poems]" (2008). Popular horror novelist Stephen King admired Dorn, describing his poetry as "talismans of perfect writing" and even naming the first novel of The Dark Tower series, "The Gunslinger," in honor of Dorn's poem. King opened both the prologue and epilogue of "The Stand" with Dorn's line, "We need help, the Poet reckoned." Dorn died of pancreatic cancer on December 10, 1999 in Denver, Colorado. His papers are collected at the University of Connecticut as well as at Indiana University at Bloomington. During his life, Dorn taught at a number of institutions of higher learning, including Idaho State University at Pocatello (1961–65); the University of Essex in England (1965-1970) as a Fulbright lecturer; Northeastern Illinois University at Chicago (1970-1971); Kent State University, Ohio (1973–74); and the University of Colorado (1977-1999). His second wife, Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, is an Englishwoman he met during his Essex-years. In the early 1970s, as a visiting poet at Kent State University, Dorn, along with British poet and editor Eric Mottram, was a mentor and supporter of the musical group Devo, and its founders Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis.