Critics Page
LOST AND FOUND
Dharma Committee Rules
FROM THE LOST AND FOUND ARCHIVAL AND PUBLISHING PROJECT AT THE GRADUATE CENTER, CUNY
1. All members of the Dharma Committee are Cool. if they stop being cool, other members of the Dharma Committee shall help them get back on a cool again.
2. They are very loyal to other Dharma Committee members and will uphold at all times the Dharma Committee against other factions which attempt to cast mud on the name—especially George Stanley and Jack Spicer.
3. They cook eggs in clean frying pans.
4. if they willingly agree to enter into Sexual intercourse they must fulfill this obligation and not fall asleep drunk with their clothes on.
5. They do not run around giving people life memberships to the Dharma Committee even though these people may be buying free drinks and own The Place.
6. They issue official reprimands.
7. They inform other members at a speed quicker than light of any information they may come across concerning a source of Dexedrine.
8. They have secret badges.
9. No member of the Dharma Committee can have read past page twenty of THE DHARMA b u MS (except Lew Welch because i think he has read the whole book but he has to pretend he hasn’t).
10. They can make up rules as they go along.
11. The Dharma Committee is shrouded in mystery and clothed in secrecy. in addition to this they wear suitable apparel.
12. The Dharma Committee has a handshake and a sign which members cannot indulge. if they do they have to sit in a lotus position for 25 minutes and think about Jack Kerouac.
From Joanne Kyger: Letters to & From, edited by Ammiel Alcalay and Joanne Kyger as part of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Lost & Found publishes original texts by figures central to and associated with New American Poetry. Poised at the intersection of scholarly investigation, innovative publishing, and cultural preservation, each Lost & Found chapbook emphasizes the importance of collaborative and archival research.
Contributor
Joanne KygerJOANNE KYGER is an American poet. She has published more than twenty collections of poetry, including The Tapestry and the Web (1965), All This Every Day (1975), The Wonderful Focus of You (1979), Going On: Selected Poems 1958 - 1980 (1983), Just Space, poems 1979 - 1989 (1991), Again: Poems 1989 - 2000 (2001), As Ever: Selected Poems (2002), and About Now: Collected Poems (2007). She is also the author of the prose collection Strange Big Moon: Japan and India Journals 1960 - 1964 (1981). Kyger lives in Bolinas, California and occasionally teaches at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Colorado.
