January 29, 1928 [New York] – February 24, 2007 [Albuquerque, New Mexico]
Frumkin was born in New York City and received his B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1950. Having held jobs as a bank teller and journalist, he started writing poetry seriously after taking an adult education class taught by Thomas McGrath. He eventually started the journal Coastlines 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 had many distinguished writers as students such as Gloria Frym, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz and Leslie Marmon Silko. His poetry appeared in Chelsea, Conjunctions, Evergreen Review, Kayak, New Letters, The Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, Sulfur, and The Best American Poetry 2002, edited by Robert Creeley.


