Information Hacker, By KINGSLEY TUFTS

Forget the Necromancer!

Forget the Holy Writ!

The Question is the Answer--

The Bit is the It.

The Yes-or-No, though eerie,

With strange finality

Is the Logic of the Query

And It Reality

Too bad that in the Question

And Software of the It

Lurks a self-destruct suggestion

Of the byter bit.

From “Form and Essence” (privately printed, 1933.) The late Kingsley Tufts was a widely published short story writer as well as, privately, a poet and musician. Thirty years ago, he and his wife, Kate, agreed that if and when either of them died, the survivor would endow an award of sufficient size that, in Kate’s words, “a poet wouldn’t have to worry about scrimping for at least a year.” Kingsley died in 1991, and a year later, Kate bequeathed $1.25 million to the Claremont Graduate School for an annual poetry award. Last March, the best 30 of some 600 entries were presented to a committee of five judges chaired by Jack Miles of the Times editorial board. Last Monday, Susan Mitchell accepted the first annual Kingsley Tufts award for her book “Rapture” (HarperCollins).