Gene Frumkin, professor emeritus of English, died recently at his home in Albuquerque. He joined the UNM Department of English in 1966 and retired in 1994, but remained active on the poetry scene locally and nationally.
In 1951, Frumkin graduated with a bachelor’s in English from UCLA. He was managing editor, then executive editor of California Apparel News, where he remained until 1966. After graduation, he began writing poetry and extending his literary activities.
He co-founded Coastlines Literary Magazine in 1955 and edited the Los Angeles magazine from 1959 - 1963. His first volume of verse, The Hawk and the Lizard, was issued by the prestigious Swallow Press in 1963. The Orange Tree followed in 1965. Also during the mid-1960s, he began leading poetry writing workshops, both at UCLA and in the community.
At UNM, Frumkin became a prolific writer. He turned out a steady stream of poetry collections, many of them from New Mexican and Southwestern presses: The Rainbow-Walker (1968), Dostoyevsky and Other Nature Poems (1972), Locust Cry: Poems 1958-1965 (1973), The Mystic Writing-Pad (1977), Loops (1979), Clouds and Red Earth (1981), A Lover’s Quarrel with America (1985), A Sweetness in the Air (1987), Comma In the Ear (1990), Saturn is Mostly Weather (1992), The Old Man Who Swam Away and Left Only His Wet Feet (1998), and Freud by Other Means (2002). With Stanley Noyes, he edited The Indian Rio Grande: Recent Poems from 3 Cultures in 1977.
He also contributed essays on poetry and fiction to Manoa, American Poetry, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Impact, Puerto del Sol, Contact II, and Blue Mesa Review.
Frumkin’s career as a teacher was equally notable. At UNM, he and David M. Johnson founded the Creative Writing Program in 1967. Frumkin headed that program for many years and served for more years as editor of Blue Mesa Review.
The list of his successful students is long, and it includes such well-known writers as Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Luci Tapahonso, Bert Almon and Leo Romero. Frumkin spent three stints at the University of Hawaii, twice as a Visiting Exchange Professor in the mid 1980s and then as a Visiting Distinguished Writer in 1989. Awards included a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (1987) and the UNM English Department’s Wertheim Award (1991).
Frumkin is survived by a son, Paul Frumkin of Albuquerque, and a daughter, Celena Allison of Santa Cruz, Calif. His papers are in the Center for Southwest Research at UNM’s Zimmerman Library.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at March 1, 2007 11:08 AM