He earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1951 from UCLA,[1] where he was editor of the UCLA Daily Bruin.[2]
Frumkin died in Albuquerque on February 18, 2007. He was survived by a daughter, Celena Allison, and a son, Paul Frumkin.[1]
Career
Frumkin worked as a bank teller before beginning his writing career as a journalist. He first took up poetry seriously while enrolled in an adult education class taught by the poet Thomas McGrath. During the 1950s he was poetry editor of a literary journal, Coastlines, which he co-founded with Mel Weisburd in 1955.[3]
In 1966, Frumkin moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to take a teaching position at the University of New Mexico, where he remained until his retirement in 1994. At the University Frumkin edited the Blue Mesa Review and taught a number of poets, including Gloria Frym, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz and Leslie Marmon Silko.[4]
In 1967, he was among more than five hundred writers and editors who signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse to pay the 10% Vietnam War Tax surcharge proposed by president Johnson.[4]