Gene Frumkin

Who was Gene Frumkin?

Gene Frumkin was an American poet and teacher.

Born and raised in New York City and educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, Eugene 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 the literary journal Coastlines, which he co-founded with Mel Weisburd in 1955.

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 students who would go on to distinguished careers, including Gloria Frym, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz and Leslie Marmon Silko. In 1968, Frumkin signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Frumkin's poetry has appeared in Chelsea, Conjunctions, Evergreen Review, Kayak, New Letters, The Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, Sulfur, and many other literary magazines, and in anthologies ranging from Robert Bly's Forty Poems Touching on Recent American History to The Best American Poetry 2002, edited by Robert Creeley. His work is noted for its meditative character, its wit, and its unexpected turns and surprises, which show the influence of Surrealism.