Who could have known that the Rilke conference would be so inspiring? The workshops, in which we dicussed individual poems and their contexts were splendid. The only problem was that there were always three workshops running parallel, so we had to make a choice. But once I was in the workshop I had selected, everything else paled in comparison with the intelligent and thoughtful discussion. I think we all learned a huge amount from these workshops. We also profited from the keynote speeches. My own favorite was Anthony Phelan's lecture on drafts of poems, a very sophisticated and subtle discussion illustrated by some compelling texts. Finally, the graduate student "poster session" was very moving. It consisted of younger scholars, each gOnet thing that  became very clear was how urgently we need a proper historical-critical edition of Rilke's poetry. An impressive part of the conference proceedings was the "Poster sesssion," in which graduate students from different countries each spoke on a single poem from the time period of the conference, 1906-1911. I look forward to next year's meeting and will post again at some later time when I know for sure what the topic will be.