Ariana Reines’ integrative work as a poet and teacher is profoundly transformative for me in her ability to leap into the heart of the meditated upon and directly encountered texts she works through as generative fields for new thought and writing. In real time she invents ways to work with poetry and mythic literature as the medicine we need to route out the many cankerworms of fear within each of us, as we work towards liberation from the many hierarchical diseases that bind us. Her firm hand and brilliant mind subvert old stale ways of ‘teaching writing’ and help guide the group through many difficult questions the chosen texts evoke as she also learns beside us. The group becomes a living entity of community, of felt thought. One of the metaphorical roles I first thought to assign to her method was one of a sacred prostitute in the temples of poetry, and I gladly join her in the study of those rites, pleasures and responsibilities in the complex work of poetry making that matters. Ariana Reines has reinvigorated me as both a poet and teacher of poetry sorely in need of ways to work both within and outside institutions as we evolve new ways to heal and rebuild separately and in community. -Lee ann Brown

I hardly can muster many words about Invisible. It has changed my life. It has made me better. It has sustained me. Stapled me to the planet. Everything I want to say about it exists in the spaces between these words. Invisible: what beginnings and endings that have all passed through these gateposts, this walled garden that flourishes in the desert. Paradisia. I did not know when I began this where it would lead. A constellation stretched across a sea of darkness. And joy and peace like hole punches allowing light to come streaming in. -JULIANA

Hi Ariana, Thank you for the video yesterday, which was so resonant & moving to me in many ways (courage found in love, one) but just to reflect back to you one small aspect: on the changing nature of Invisible College and how those iterations have felt as a member-- and this is very sentimental, but it makes me think about the "Dayenu" section of the Passover service--- because really at any point during this whole experiment, "it would have been enough",-- I mean, if you decided to step away or shut it down at any point in time it would have already been enough, to just have shared these experiences, met these people, read these texts, first Rilking, & then Inanna...Dayenu! I am full of gratitude every step of the way. It was also resonant because a week ago I confronted the fact that I'd been doing a lot of poetry-related projects for the last few months but knew I needed to turn towards just writing more directly again and I had a lot of fear around that, but I made a kind of rededication of sorts, although it still feels kind of terrifying, and listening to you say you were going to be turning towards writing/a writing space was a lucky alignment of sorts. Thanks for everything :) -Jake

Dear Ariana, I would like to add up my thank you note to the bunch that have been sent your way. This two years at invisible college have been a blessing, so much fun, full of discoveries and a new sensation that communities can be created on this internet space and around poetry and come out of the blue (apparently). I am so glad I stumbled upon this and yet at the same time my studies had left me somehow knowing that there was more, raw and alive, and I found it in invisible college and your masterful and sensitive work, with us and with your poems. Thanks for everything and I hope, until next time, with my best wishes -Marta

Hi Ariana, Invisible college has changed my life, humbled me, made me submit to mystery, completely melted my heart, and made it something other than a numb husk of misery. -EMILY

I joined your incredible and magical zoom community since the Lock down in NYC (even though I kept silent so far; I am neither poet nor writer so I feel self-conscious to speak up) however… Joining your regular online meetings, lectures, gatherings, celebrations, reading groups began to hand me a structure which was lacking in my life and also gives me hope for soul nourishing future communities. We are in so many in-betweens. A year full of awakening. While listening to your inspiring words I began a series of drawings, a medium which I had left behind 20 year ago- To my surprise these drawings became really intimate and meaningful to me, like a clock they were the only reliable entity in my surrounding and they slowly became a source of Healing. It’s hard for me not to connect them also to Inanna, Brainard, Sat morning Demonology, or your many other online offerings. This space for shared experience you are providing holds a potential for cultural healing; To come to a moment of surrender in order to be walking within the space of intrinsic trust in this life, oneself and one another. We are collectively transitioning; a place were real change can take place. -Kerstin Braetsch

I will never forget all the early morning birds sound, different landscape from different windows, all the babies, wisdom kitties, energetic puppies, every single words, all the silence, non-stop keywords typings … it’s nearly 3 years since I first join the IG live from Ariana I never say anything about it but last 3 years is one of the most difficult period in my whole life, pandemic is only part of the background, but I do get so much comfort, energy, hopes from IC community. It’s my privilege to be here <3. -PATSY SHIU

Hi Ariana and Everyone for these years of IC which have been a lifeline to me and to so many! And I love the new name for this thread! And am sooooooo grateful to you Ariana for your good heart and your vision and your kindness and generosity and amazing poetic spirit! IC has been such beautiful support — when my husband’s parents died of Covid early in the pandemic being able to be a part of IC truly helped me thru so much shock and grief and in my daily struggles living with the effects of having a rare cancer being able to stream in to this group’s kindness and creative energy and brilliance has been life-sustaining to me. Deep gratitude! Nine bows!…Sending love and gratitude to you Ariana and to all ICers!!!!! -Resa

Ohhh, my dears. Joining y’all after your initial time together reading Rilke was such a gift. I felt grateful and shy yet able to speak, straightaway. Tuning into saturday morning cartoons—-the likes of which id never watched as a child or elsewise—that engaged me in the web of our great work of love. No dissociation nor showing off. Web because I was a part of it, work to share from a place of some understanding and good will, curious as critical. Ariana Reines it’s true: you ARE erudite. and funny; gorgeous and generous as the July day is long. Thanks for making, holding and sharing space. phoebe ramone jessica dillon Ellis Suzanna Slack ,we appreciate your admin efforts and everyone I won’t soon forget the dance party following the full moon in cancer 2020 open mic offering. Beauty…Blessed to be rambling my way through this soft mound of thanks for this grace. -ninlil

gratitude for this space and all the that was spoken ,cried, sang, danced, painted, built, made into form thru desire to learn, change, grow. thank you to Ariana , Phoebe, Jess, Suzanne, RILKE, INNANA, NAG HAMADI and all other sources of inspiration. big love to all who have been part. -MONIE

As our time together under the banner of IC comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what astoundingly fertile ground this project has been for exchanging and seeding ideas through conversations and joint studies. I am incredibly grateful to everyone for their manifold contributions here, to Ariana Reines for her leadership, to everyone who spearheaded a zine, and to those community members who lent their administrative and technical assistance (shout out to jessica DILLON, Ellis Suzanna Slack, and phoebe KAUFMAN!) It does seem to me, too, that the current moment calls for WORK, and by that I mean the deep, determined, and fearless engagement of artists with their art. For many of us, a certain reorientation or even sacrifice might be required to meet this moment. I certainly feel that way…Sending big love to all ICers: past, present, & future! #MaFinEstMaCommencement -JESS C.

This program, the interactions had & the friendships made completely & forever changed my life. My words do not need to be many to say; I love you, thank you, my spirit resonates more & better because of this Ariana & everyone. -TANNER

Coming into the collective at the beginning, it meant that I had somewhere to be and something to do with and for myself. I began to show up, write in the moment, hardly editing or looking back at the flow. I came from the cave and showed up on your doorstep. I want to say thank you for letting me bring you the birds, the astrology of Venus and her relationship to the epochs, reanimated cycles of dust in the shape of butterflies. The fringes of a humanity we all mirrored for one another allowed me a reanimation of Spirit. This was a place I was touched by, where I felt the possibility of being human in a family of strangers, where I was able to acknowledge the abstractness and the beauty and some safety in it all. I want to thank Ariana for tilling a strange and layered soil, for her consistency, for the comfort in her image and voice and the saturation of her voices, all of them weaving. I want to thank her for being a light filled chandelier that attracted all of our moth selves, for the visitors and their lineages. I will complete the bug zine  * Im sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. -GINA KELLEY

i too will join the chorus to express the vital role ic and each and every one of you has played in these past years in unearthing, harnessing, and recapturing my sense of poetic self through a very lost and found time personally, professionally, creatively... i love you ariana, i love every holy dreamer as maeve hanna used to say <3 -JESS D

Rilking, then Inanna, then the Brain Trust -- they've been the score -- spiritual, psychic, emotional -- of my last few months. Really. Followed me across the country and got me up at 6 am. I'm so lucky. And feeling that time together unspooling still inside me. I felt permission to live with and inside those texts in new ways. Challenging ways. Grounding ways. And I felt permission to live with and among a community of strangers. Intimately. Rigorously. Ariana you are ferocious and compassionate and terrifically sensitive and I'm very grateful. -Agnes Borinsky

It's difficult to express how deeply these workshops have affected me, but I wanted to offer these words as part of the web of connection and energy this work has generated. I have felt so energized, creatively fed, emotionally nourished, and intellectually expanded by these conversations, and so much of that comes down to Ariana's skills as a teacher and moderator.  It's unbelievable to me that a conversation among 100 participants (and sometimes more) can be this intimate, searching, and real. I've been talking this up with my friends and loved ones, and that has generated other beautiful conversations... And I've been able to sit down and draw, and write poems again, and I can't tell you how grateful I am. With gratitude -Rachel Crummey

I wanted to write to you as a follow up to today's Zoom session to reiterate my great appreciation for your pedagogical facilitation of The Brain Trust, and to offer a testimonial in light of my comments. My introduction to your pedagogy was through Innana, which meant that I was a tad behind the folks who had been immersed in Rilking earlier on, but I remain floored by how open and welcoming the group space was as a result of your facilitation of it. Innana is not a text I had previous knowledge of or context for, and I'm sure I'm speaking for all participants when I say that your contemplations--alongside the group's ponderings, ofc!--were instrumental to being able to access the knowledge, medicine, and above all, spiritual attunement that engaging with Innana offers. I also came to the Innana sessions by pure happenstance, having read A SAND BOOK not too long before following your Insta, etc. I came to them hungry for a way to engage with the written word at a time when writing seemed impossible. I came to them living in a spiritual vacuum and in the poisonous intellectual mindset that human existence was, in some way, doomed. I came to them wondering what my role was as a BIPOC in a poetry community so distracted by awards and nepotism and upholding capitalistic structures at the expense of accessing an inner well of knowledge that we inherit from our ancestors, from the creators of language, from Sumer & beyond. All of which is to say, I have been utterly fucking altered by the space you have created, by your words of wisdom (a notebook I had been struggling to fill suddenly turned into two notebooks FULL of quotes from you, meanderings of my own, seedlings of poems to be and poems since passed), and by the space you have created so generously for all of us. The same remains true of The Brain Trust. It is hard work to hold the same space as a racial epithet. Harder still to be in a leadership role around that content, I'm sure of it. I want to reiterate something I said today: that what you are doing, what you are helping us to do in our engagement with Brainard, is incredibly taxing and important work. We see that. We are challenged by it. And personally, I remain in the space because I have confidence-reverence (truly, it's a combo of those feelings) for you as a facilitator and as a human being and as a poet, etc., etc. I feel I should stop here so as to not overwhelm or gush. Today I felt the need to speak out briefly, but also to not overwhelm those among the group who are perhaps engaging with internalized systemic shit for the first time. It's important that everyone have this space and acknowledge the incredible diversity of our group, while also working through what each diverse individual therein needs to do to be a better sibling to, above all, our Black and Indigenous sisters/brothers/GNC-beauties. Okay. Sorry for the long-windedness. Sending love. Hoping you are staying safe. Looking ever-forward to this week's remaining sessions. With gratitude and in awe of your efforts -Raena Shirali

This testimonial is for Ariana, Phoebe and everyone in the group whose comments and presence I have been and thought with over the last three months. When everyone read Rilke, I heard: READER YOU ARE NOT A CHILD, you do not need find your inner child, YOU ARE AN ADULT. I needed that. Because the OPPOSITE is so often transmitted (the media, school etc.) When everyone read Inanna, I heard: your lover can be like your son, your sister, your mother, your brother, your father. Repetition can also reorganise. I needed that too: that homage to pleasure. And when we read the descent of Inanna, I learnt that JUSTICE, THE BODY AND MERCY are flowing on THREE SEPARATE CHANNELS. I was in shock about that for a week. I also learnt that birth occurs in the underworld and that reproduction is somehow related to disassociated servitude. Joe Brainard: how to move through the button of the belly to the belly, and then move from there. Rilke's castle, Inanna's boat, and Brainard's truck afforded me structured tripping and a home - one that grows down into the ground and up towards the sky. So yeah, like a tree. I also learnt somewhere in there that the fact that a tree once spoke to me is NOT NECESSARILY GOOD. -Rebecca Close

When the pandemic appeared, we made choices, and we had choices made for us. I chose Extinction Rebellion and Starhawk, wanting to dive into Gaia, since Gaia seems to be talking to us with the virus. Starhawk led me to Reclaimers and Inanna, and I followed. A month later, when I was on FB looking for the Inanna - witches, I found your group, which was then reading through the Inanna text. Though I asked to join and you let me in, the choice still seems like it was made for me. And after all, you are certainly your own variety of alchemical witch, hovering over a poetry alembic. I’d already been fascinated by your brilliant Mercury-mind, so serious about astrology. I know a little astrology, and in the 90s I had a column in a women’s mag--under the alias of Allegra Quince. I was ashamed of it—obviously Cosmo is not Art Forum – and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I left the mag officially when the ed in chief retired, though I kept doing the 900-line (remember those!). The stars seemed dim and unimportant for years, until lately. Astrology's stories, its planets and rhythms run the world. Meanwhile you float happily in the anima mundi. Also—separate but related—I’ve been trying to write about whiteness for a long time, really trying, getting nowhere.  My secret theory is that the white woman is the excuse for the police-industrial complex, for the murder of the other, for the border wall, for the anthropocene and for the invention of race. (Excuse, not cause.)  As our world’s most hated signifier, she obliges us by hating herself. Our read of Erishkegal added understanding: the white lady has the “eye of death” and spends her life attempting to hide it. The other day, when I was thinking of the deadliness of the dream of the white woman, the violence of freon, and how little I had achieved in all this thinking, a little neuron remembered the Theory of the Young-Girl. I heard about it a long time ago and (I thought) the “theory" aligned with my critique. So I looked it up and found that you fucking translated it. (I actually think I heard about it before your translation—when I was single….before 2004. My french sucks—do you think there were some bootleg translations before yours?) Anyway: You are amazing. Duh. My idea about the white woman seems stuck at the same problematic level as the YG Critique. Maybe you would do a group on the YG. I would be interested. We need to talk back to it, because it is so incomplete. Unless we just see it as a critique of capitalism. I need to read more. Reading Joe Brainard was a complex trip. Biggest brain trust lessons were from you -- watching you navigate the teaching/policing of a painful conversation during an extremely painful time. I’ve done adjunct teaching increasingly steadily for twenty years now and your leadership of the group,  based on your trust of the group, was a wonder to watch. I never spent time with Brainard's work—so I needed this and learned a great deal. The concept of the "poetry neighborhood" that you brought up today helps -- I never felt a part of Brainard's hood. In fact, though I’ve written a lot of poetry, I have never been part of any hood. And that brings me to probably  the finest magic trick you did here in our Rilke-Mythic-Gnostic Summer: you made a neighborhood. Did anything make sense? Don’t know! But you often mention that you get letters from your group-ies and I am throwing one in the pile. Love to you! THANK YOU. xx -Alexis Quinlan

Ariana, I wanted to reach out regarding my experience in this beautiful Brain Trust.  As you know I joined having very little education in Literature and I came to the table totally intimidated.  What a time it’s been to be putting myself in this space. I feel like I am breaking up all the “plaque” from the intellectual intimidation I had created for myself. When on that Thursday you were so passionate about art and ethics and why we are here, it really broke down some walls that were hard to lose, not because I didn’t want them to go, because Ive been waiting for it, but it felt like a dream. I didn’t think I’d be sitting in a space where someone was so real about what I feel inside, very often.  I find myself waking in the night giving speeches that are just as such.  However I'm not as eloquent and not a lot of people are listening.  And they often revolve around agriculture and earth.  It really shook me.  I NEEDED it.  I needed to realize that what I want to be a part of in this life and what I want to see in our society have to be down in these spaces and I need to put more effort into asserting myself and accepting that I've arrived.  It’s not a moment to be intimidated by anything other than what is oppressing us. I am quiet in this course, but I am itching to move a bit.  I hope I can make the prerequisite for the next group. As far as the work! I am conflicted with my memory and I keep comparing my experience and my voice to Brainard’s experience and voice and they are very obviously, very different.  My “I remembers” have so much anger in them.  We have lost so much of nature so quickly.  My experience wasn’t as innocent as Brainards either.  As a child I was a fierce protector because I had to be aware of what was happening all around me all the time.  However, I can’t tell if I am immature with them.  Or, If I am using “I remember” to justify my experience to stand up in the shame of what I deem the faults of the collective in some way.  I do know there's a layer that's defending my experience living in black and brown neighborhoods which is influenced by the current climates. I'd like to share.  I know you are busy.  And probably get so much coming in.  But it’s a chance to throw it out there for me. THANK YOU!!  Forever, thank you! Lots of Love -Kate Meehan

Dear Ariana, Thank you for creating and holding this space of trust. You said at the start this would be a metaphor cleanse and much like a cleanse it brought up so much of the old shit stuck in us. Also like a cleanse it is painful and gut wrenching. I am extremely grateful for your commitment and generosity to persevere and extend the sessions when it was clear we were not through. We needed to sit in the pain. This is profound work. It continues to work itself on me and permeates everything I do. Much love -Maegan Hill-Carroll

I just want to thank you for everything you said today. The generosity of your spirit during this strange glitch of time has been so grounding for me ( and so many of us!) and it's with such brazen innovation that you've created a fresh space that so full of promise. I just wanted to reach out and let you know that I am in solidarity and sending all the good things I can through the abyss. -LEAH D

Hi Phoebe. Hi Ariana. It's Dana Wyse. I have been wallflowering the sessions since Rilke, and I wanted to thank you both for your service to mankind. When the Earth caught the clap, I quarantined in my art studio in Paris. It was the first time in 17 years I was alone without my son. My head grew one blonde with black roots dreadlock. Poetry School, you Ariana, blew my fucking brains out. I had no idea words mattered so much, and I'm a sorta writer. Quarantine words, and the time we spend electronically together - you are all my timeline. I Remember is such an exquisite choice as we lose time to days, memory to time. Thank you. And thank you for redirecting the minds of your students the other day back to Brainard. We need more terrorists. xo -Dana Wyse

I want to thank you for creating a community where like-minded individuals can open themselves to art, poetry and medicine.  What you are doing is decolonizing pedagogy and the canon, for which I am forever grateful! - Jennifer Goldsworthy, Bristol, UK

Hi Ariana and Phoebe, I just wanted to thank you both for the work. Phoebe I am in my 6 the decade and often wish for assistance with the tech. your thoughtful seemingly hidden stiTches in the Ethernet are mucho appreciated. I am not on Facebook so I have not participated in the brainard zine project or the deck which inspires me to make my own. Ariana I am so grAtEful for your generosity in sharing what you love and your willingness to go deep,deep,deep till we are in the total darkness of the seed and than spring forth with a new way of looking at the world, thru your mitzvah I get to do the same with myself. I am sending a very small contribution to the project and perhaps you will share some biblical fruits together ,dates,figs,grapes and of course the pomegranate holder of the laws of the talmud 101 seeds. I am a untitled scholar and I remind myself those that taught me the most had no titles.i appreciate your acknowledgement of this . I do support this f***education system I called it a necessary evil , perhaps as we go thru upheaval into the new world we will have no need of the stratification of our current educational system of a down. Your friend Julian is the person who connected me with your verse and the class. Hugs, hugss -Xuki Ramona

I just wanted to write and say thank you so much for opening the Brain Trust space this month. I jumped in late on day 5 or so (it was quotation-mark-Gate-day) and everything felt pretty awful and wrong, but I'm so glad I stayed in the process of it all. I don't think I actually spoke at all except for reading a few lines aloud, because I haven't been able to articulate what exactly the process of Remembering is doing in me, and am feeling uncharacteristically non-verbal on Zoom. But I've been writing heaps, and I like what I've been writing, and I'm really excited for future things of this nature.Love and thanks from Berlin (tho I grew up in Lowell MA!) -Anna Geary Meyer

These past few weeks have been the most eye opening. Waking up every day to be taught and lead by Ariana has been nothing short of a gift. Ariana has helped teach me grace through words, strength through conversation and patience in all of the ways. Her teachings and videos have been my greatest excitement. I wake up daily looking forward to my cup of tea, her teachings and the brain expansion to come. She has created a sacred space where people all over the world come together over such a poignant text and dig deeper together, asking questions of ourselves and each other that prompt us to create a better world and understanding of the one we are living in now.  I deeply admire the openness in which Ariana fostered for all of us and the text. She has broadened my horizons through language and satiated my brain and heart in so many ways. I have immense gratitude for this creative e-community that has brought me so much inspiration, challenge, growth and understanding. Thank you so much for holding this creative space for all of us during such a bizarre moment in our lives.It's incredible how things come into your life just when you need them. I look forward to next time x -Alison Horowitz

Dear Ariana and Phoebe, Just wanted to send along my deep respect & gratitude for the immense work you're doing to create this space & to say I'm in it—let's do this world repair thing! In it to win it! Onward! Thank you! -Sarah Sohn

Thank you so much for today. your words and your intentions are resonating with a part of me that has been longing to vibrate in this way. thank you for sharing your medicine. with respect and humility -Grace McLean

I would like to express my gratitude to you. This experience has entered my life at a time when I needed it. I don't take it for granted. I wholly appreciate it and grow from it each day. I really truly in myself with my soul and heart want to remain, and learn with you and what you have built. With regards and respect -Maeve hanna

Thank you for the real conversation today, really appreciate your style and your presence. I took a class with you last summer at Home School and it was so quick and brief and really happy that I've had a chance to dive in deeper with you. -Vanessa Aricco

Kim Krans recommended a Sand Book on one of her #draw the feeling IG lives.  A tired af mom from Louisiana, I was just looking for a place to listen to poetry and read Rilking with a community.  I listened and my soul responded in words and pictures and unrecognizable pieces.  I know it wasn't just me because as these magnificent souls from around this globe shared, they were touched too.   The exquisitely talented art that was shared was humbling to witness. Ariana, always authentic, the presence in her words like homemade buttered biscuits for my southern soul, provided a space... and what filled that space was indescribable but I will try.  A medicinal lagoon that I could visit with each zoom video I watched...  dipping my toe of thoughts and sometimes splashing... revealing shadowed memories with Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth.  And with the Joe Brainard trust somehow finding joy in the constant teasing of my memory, although admittedly sometimes despair at the lack of change inside me and around me.  In a way, it restored some forgotten fragment of myself previously allocated to slumber but never dream.  And this tribe of people here - they are scooping the nectar, they are shaking fists of truth, they are so kind.  Yes I am a sap, oozing feelings (pisces sun and moon who could blame me?) but also I have received a lifeline, an unexpected blessing - dare I claim a miracle?.  So if you have read all this, maybe you grok what's happening here and if you like smaller chunks of words then: Yes yes and Yes!  This has been a lifeline. AND I AM SO THANKFUL FOR YOU AND PHOEBE AND ALL THE PEEPS IN THE GROUP. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU -Heather Hudson

Thank you (and Phoebe!) for the life-giving energy and continuity of these sessions. The fallbacks of embarrassment, shyness and anonymity that I default to in much of the internet world suddenly feel like a well of feeling and generative juice. I am so grateful to join you and our weird, beautiful poet family every morning. I thank you extra much for your effort and the depth you're bringing. To me personally, our gatherings feel a bit transcendent of time. They feel like a place to be, like a room. Maybe a room within the home we make in poetry, as you put it. And, from my big damp heart to the frazzled ends of my nervous system, thanks for also breaking the format today to talk. The moment you mentioned psychic interference I felt you'd intuited something crucial, like you coughed up the lump from inside my throat. There is so much wisdom in what you're doing and what the group is making. -Kelsa Trom

This mornings discussion was incredibly important. I want to support the intention of your space however I can. Walking the I Remember path, the exploration of innocence and shame, the bearing witness, the “psychic cultural surgery" What we are accomplishing in the space and the possibility we have of raising the vibration of the whole. Casting a spell of change. yes! The spirit in which we do things matters. the spirit matters. this matters. with respect and gratitude -Kerrie Penney

Dear Ariana, Please keep doing this. I suppose it is partially the way the texts perform their horoscopes, but in each iteration this work has given me a context inside of Covid for which I am hugely thankful. I have a reason to be awake by 9:30. To wash my face. To make coffee. To smile back at faces that are now the faces I have seen more than any other since the beginning of March. After class it keeps going. I read about Akkadian or Kenneth Koch or pop art. My son sneaks into the room and says "I heard you say you remember white t-shirts and underarm wrinkles!" thank you -Mindy Cardozo

I've been speaking rapturously about this group to anyone who will listen calling it "the wild west of zoom / a literary deep dive / a warm embrace over the chill of the internet." I have learned about so many authors, so many experimental film makers, and so much new music to imbibe. It's really been such a cool space to be a part of. I love peering into everyone's little square and at some point I'll muster the courage and contribute. A truly nice and smart seeming group of funny and mostly unpretentious people ;-) I remember on the last day of INANNA hearing about the Brain Trust and feeling *so* excited that this would be a bday gift to myself. (I am a May 30th Gemini.) So that's really neat. One last word, in pre-pandemic times I was playwright and performer. I've always been an inveterate dabbler though and just submitted my first poem to a little contest via an arts org I know. In my application I used the word "anaphora" and I feel very proud of that, lol. Could this mean I am now a "real" poet?! Thank you from the bottom of my Gemini heart!! -Eliza Bent

Today was great. I was moved to tears while people read. I don’t cry easily. It’s a real heart opener. (Haha with the bleeding heart opener)-Ariel Engle

Dearest Ariana, I wish to thank you so very much - For my ability to attend Zoom today and also to be on the facebook group - it is so inspiring. It means a lot as it brings back memories of my friend Jannet - who passed away last december and her participation as a "Maenad" in the project The Banquet 1992 by reading a selection of Inanna - It is so so meaningful for me that I saw your column in ArtForum on the anniversary of what would have been her 70th birthday—I have no words at the moment but a poem will come.. I think your project and work is so important - and as an artist who studies astrology, mythology as a past time - so your voice resonates so much with me. with best wishes and blessings, I am enclosing a photo of me from The Banquet - ( much younger then am  !) ayapi kai Filia -Chrysanne S

I am so happy to say that I have been following the waxing phase oracular jams from day one of Rilking, and even when I have been working over the live sessions, I have been catching up in the bath after a long day of chart readings (I am an astrologer! @astrologyforthecurious or @flodevereux) This offering you are putting out in the world feels like a velveteen and fractal soul massage and an invitation to the ancient library! THANK YOU THANK YOUU! Such generosity of spirit through the sharing of energy, knowledge, music, practices and more. I hope that you are both being fed in the ways that you need. -Florence Devereux

i’d like to say a few things: firstly thanks for mentioning the ‘silent folks’ of the group. im certainly not a lurker or troll but rather, as one who is new to both zoom and to a group seminar / sharing situation, i suppose - im not sure why - shy?  im wasn't quite ready to hear my own voice. i loved the writing time, i free-wrote, i made some quality gibberish…& i really appreciated when you broke down your pedagogical moves for this ‘class’. it was situating and helpful. some days, i had my mind blown by many of these poets… agnes, zoe buck, tom snarsky - i still remember his image of the crest of a wave being inanna’s throne from day 1. thanks for this material, and the experience and love that you bring to it.  when i was prepping to write on ‘arena’ from A Sand Book for a class I was taking, i noticed that you had conducted an ‘ancient evenings’ seminar and i was so disappointed to have missed that opportunity. a revival of interest in the mythological and imaginal within contemporary poetics is something i’ve been searching for within the academy, and it is difficult to find. Jung, for one, is not welcome there. it was wonderful to have a chance to experience it in this super wierd way. very much appreciated. -Andrew Whiteman

Ariana, Phoebe, Today’s session was magical, powerful, wide open and yes, white hot. Thank you. -Kerrie Penney

Hi Ariana and everyone involved in making these meetings happen, I've been taking part since the second session. It has been enormously rich. I'm very grateful to you for opening this up. Its been really expanding for my own practice, I write songs, and also writing for its own sake. To be way back in the early days of civilization is letting me feel time in a different way. Which is particularly enlightening in these endless lock down moments. So Thank you! -Isabel Muñoz-Newsome

I don't have any literary background.  Rilking offered me an opportunity to explore poetry in a way that is mostly unavailable to people outside of literary circles.  Ariana Reines has created a space where literary and non-literary voices are valued.  As a person that's shy about speaking on the internet it's a great place to just listen. -Nick Mechak

Hey Ariana (and shoutout to Phoebe!), Really appreciate you two. Ariana, I just watched your IG live video from last night about the systematic murder of black people in this country and feeling an aimlessness to it, having the protection of skin. I only really want to say thank you for it and that I also feel this and am thinking about it a lot. Unsure of where to go, what I am allowed to feel. What to do with my hands and have it feel genuine. Wanting to hide and not hide. Wanting to feel that if I feel anything about it I am not virtue signalling. I am beginning a project spurred on from Inanna (obviously) and it is making me go back into my past, into things I did not like about my past and for the first time, seeing these aspects as strengths. I basically grew up in a Christian cult and it was absolutely stifling. But I was forced to read the Biblical text (which made me enjoy reading in general) at a very young age.  While I hated the intransigence of my family's faith and would never want to go back to it there, I am so grateful for the stories. For the text itself. My heart always circled on the stories of the Old Testament and I looked to characters like Ruth and Esther as examples for strength. My mother is of Jewish descent and her family anglophiled themselves, changed their name, and forsook all religious rites, everything for self protection. Hid themselves. I have been circling back to this and feel a physical grief to it. Being cut off from this source. All of this in a round about way to say that in my research/food for this poetry, I came across a passage in Proverbs that reminded me of the Huluppu Tree and your IG live video. The passage is from Proverbs 8, is about wisdom. The end passage says that those who hate wisdom love death. That if there is not a resolve to enter through truth's door, to wait outside it while seeking readiness, that the spirit will die. That if you do not speak, if you do acknowledge wisdom/truth entering through you, even when it is difficult (especially when it is difficult/intolerable to acknowledge), the spirit will cease to live. In Genesis, in the beginning, first there was word. There was word! Everything hinges on thought/speech act and that it should always strive for truth as much as we can bear. I am thinking of Judith Butler's Precarious Life. We are born into a world of others. Thrust into language. That we are called upon to respond and our life, our living and fate, depends on that response. I love poetry because it is the closest ear I have to this original thrust-ness of address, into language, in seek of something that feels true. Fills with true. Thank you for saying the uncomfortable things. It resonated. -Juliana Lutz

I joined for Inanna this past week and woke up at 6 so I could be live with your group and wept wept wept every morning hearing the poetry. I had read this Jungian analysis book several years ago called Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women which analyzes the descent story and Ereshkigal and women's lives under patriarchy. When I read it I was in the throws of a very deep underworld time in my life. Grieving lots of loss - loss of a parent (my dad who had died suddenly a few years before) as well as the end of a marriage. The book, the story of Inanna and Ereshkigal performed a strange revival in me that I was stunned by. Reading with you all and reading the whooolllllleee story of Inanna - the love poems and the whole thing this week for the first time - just undid me. It feels like this 3 years later conclusion and I am in awe. How some whatever spirit works and leads when we submit to it's path is truly stunning. I didn't know I was going to write all that when I came to write you. I feel such a strong kinship and am truly grateful to have found it and to hear you and see your ways of working, even distantly. With Love -Carrie Cook

It’s a gift to be welcomed into an anchoring routine that allows you to show up on your own terms while still feeling close to other people, their brains, their kitchens and living rooms and beds and backgrounds, spread out across zoom space, all in our little rilking boxes, plugged in and muted yet unquestioningly committed to anything but business as usual— I am deeply grateful to you all for this gift and I would do it over and over again no matter how close to the surface the crisis of being in the world feels. Thank you!! -Emily Martin

Ariana Reines has transformed The Duino Elegies into one of my most intimate relationships during the pandemic. She's a wise, electric, compassionate sage guiding the gathered mozaic through the breathless unfolding of Rilke's masterpiece. Every morning, we look out at the landscape of Rilkers, such a wide-ranging community of like-minded souls, hold virtual hands, and bond in our publicly private ways over the journey. Thank you Ariana, I've learned so much, about continuing to go, about letting in, about distance, in writing, in self! -EDWIN TORRES

RILKING is a medicinal, joyous, badass poet's mystery school I've always hungered for! This class is the opposite of most things in our culture, in its blazing-heartedness & real wisdom. Ariana is a true & generous teacher, and this 'class' is a super deep hangout that has transformed some of the hellishness of now with the superabundant medicine of poetry and togetherness that Ariana calls forth like no other. -Erin Robinsong

So, let’s say that the Duino Elegies are a place: A fantastic, mystical, treacherous forest, complete with heroes and angels and talking beasts. The kind of place where you feel watched. Well, then Ariana Reines has taken the role of the benevolent witch in that forest, who through the strength of her insights and practical know-how has built a wonderful little cottage and learned how to thrive there. And then Rilking has been this great house party in that cottage, the kind where you go without knowing anybody, but get to meet all of these interesting people and you’re having the best time, and you find yourself on the deck watching the stars at 3am, and you feel like your eyes are emeralds and your skin is shimmering silk and your hair is flowing out into the nightly heavens, reaching the ends of the universe. -Martin Ingebrigtsen

thank you so deeply for this time together, which transformed these first weeks of the lockdown for me in a million ways. I have been living with the Duino Elegies for 35 years, set excerpts of them to music for a dance score in the late 80s (which included the sounds of the Berlin Wall coming down, and excerpts of the sexiest moment in Rosenkavalier) as a memorial to a friend of mine, David Garfinkel, who was my first friend to die in the AIDS pandemic, in 1985. So to revisit the Elegies in this latest pandemic was deeply powerful for me on many echoing levels of valence…and you are doing something really special: to be so insightful without ever falling into academicism, to me that is a rare and special skill, and maybe you poets do this all the time in private, but as a visitor from outside, I don’t get to have that experience as often as I would like: when I read criticism or come across lectures, they are so often choked with academic stuff that I have to translate into English in order to glean anything interesting…part of the healing pleasure of our RILKING gatherings was that, for me, all the people were actually strangers, I don’t think I have met any of these folks, including you, in person. I’m finding that what I miss most in lockdown is encounters with NEW people. I can maintain my connections with my friends and beloveds from a distance, we all have rituals to stay connected with close people, the hard part of ordinary life to replicate is accidental but meaningful encounters with new people, and this gathering certainly did that, at a really compelling and fun level. for me, these gatherings were like the few best dinners I’ve had at an artist colony, where a bunch of really smart and thoughtful people get to talking about something authentically interesting, and all the jockeying for position and bullshit preening falls away in the joy of really connecting. that doesn’t happen every night, but when it does happen, it is a joy. you managed (with some help from RMR ;-)) to create a situation in which that happened every single day, and it was beautiful. -Eve Beglarian

It is an honor and thrill to be invited to study with Ariana, who isn’t only one of the great poets of our age, but who is also warm and funny and glowing and a guide. It is an honor and a thrill to bathe in Rilke, roll him about on our tongues, to pray with strangers in a lunation container. It is a revolutionary way of reading, sharing, learning, prayer. All on zoom! THANK YOU FOR POET CLASS IT FILLS MY WELL!!! xoxoxo -Lauren Matthews

I'm going to be general and say that after college, unless you choose to place yourself in another academic situation, you kind of lose that type of forum for discussion and deep diving into texts.  Maybe you talk to friends who've read the same thing about your experience but it isn't the same as a communal exploration of a work. This was a return to that collective learning, in the most welcome sense.  Especially, at a time when we need to connect and cultivate and care for one another. Rilke was our medium in this case, but I would welcome this experience over and over again with other texts and Ariana as our benevolent piercing guide.  Being vulnerable and thoughtful with one another was beautifully satisfying. And I cannot stress enough that this was a group journey- these elegies now feel more known but also like something of a secret seed that we all share. I'm deeply hungry for this kind of democratic and sensitive collaborative learning.  Hopeful for the impact that continued accessible education could have on society as a whole. Hopeful for more of this on a personal level as well. Thankful for it all. -Rachael Petach

Taking part in RILKING 2020 daily over this past lunation cycle has changed my life. It's been an anchor to my morning, a spine to my day, and has opened a door, inviting my heart into joy during deeply anxious times. As a facilitator, Ariana has created a warm environment for us to think together, gently guiding us through the poems while giving ample space for everyone to create new thoughts collectively. -Jessica Bebeneck

As I've spent the last few days sifting through my notes and my thoughts about what I can only describe as a miraculous and life-changing experience, I've also pulled together a few (many) words about what it has meant to me. I wanted to start with a brief story: Last Thursday night, I was able to attend a virtual reading hosted by White Whale Books here in Pittsburgh. Jason Schneiderman and Dawn Lundy Martin gave a wonderful reading, and in many ways I felt it speaking to the conversations in Rilking and my own thoughts and notes. The final question from the audience was what each poet was currently reading. Dawn mentioned, among other things, that she was listening in on RILKING every morning and spoke really beautifully about the experience and about how your readings and the comments from the group had informed some of her earlier comments and given her so much life and thought in this really weird time. This was stunning for me not only because it grounded all these resonances I'd been feeling, but also because it made me feel, even in such a peripheral way, like I was able to have access to a real community of poetry. A lively and ongoing conversation. I have had some levels of institutional access in varying ways through my adult life (I have an undergraduate fiction writing degree and took a couple of poetry classes as part of it; I spent a bit of time in publishing, although the part of publishing that's very very far away from poetry). But for a combination of reasons--strange decisions, ill-suitedness to academia, accident and luck, money and the lack of it--my life has taken me further and further from that kind of institutionalized community. For the last several years, any poetry I've written or read or loved has been as a deeply solitary pursuit. I've done my best to take advantage of local readings and events, but I've worked nights for the last several years, making those opportunities sporadic. Limited funds have made courses and retreats mostly prohibitive. And it has been just now, in this deeply weird and scary and loaded time, that I feel like I've found the seeds of my own engagement with the kind of community I've been longing for, and have been struggling to find paths towards outside of those traditional institutions--and I've found it through RILKING. I've been mostly a silent but deeply engaged lurker through the past days. I've never read Rilke; it's been years since I discussed literature, much less poetry like this, in a group setting--and never with a group this deeply in tune with the things that I think are really important about poetry and about the entire enterprise. The first few days, especially, I was overwhelmed to the point of basically being stunned into silence--and I mean this in the best possible way; I felt like I needed so much time to process the depth and intensity of what I was learning and experiencing and thinking. Like unbelievable riches and generosity were just pouring out of the little zoom screen. Your readings and your insights, Ariana, have been breathtaking and stunning and have been just what I needed in this moment. The rest of the group, too, has given me so much. Really, I feel like it's been simultaneously a crystallization and an opening. I consider myself so deeply fortunate to have been able to be a part of this, to learn from you and from the whole group, to see my mind open outwards and my sight focus in on the beginnings of how to read these strange and astonishing poems and, more broadly, what I really want to do within this entire enterprise, itself. I was quiet because, especially at first, I had no idea how to jump in or what to say. But I feel like, in so many ways, this experience was everything I needed. You and the group have given me such an enormous gift--insights and approaches and ways of thinking that I will take with me forever. And this gift has been all the more precious in this strange and terrifying moment for all of us, and this pivotal crossroads for me. RILKING has carried me through the first days of a massive shift. And I feel like now, thanks to you and thanks to everyone, I have everything I need to really begin. I am armed with new ways of looking at poetry and the world, new possibilities of ways to articulate my own experiences and what is most dear and important in this moment.This is also to say--I'm really thrilled for what is coming next. Especially in the last few sessions, I felt like I had my wits about me enough to want to attempt to contribute more vocally--but it was a challenge for me to break out of the space I'd already carved myself into as a silent participant. I am really excited to dive into more work with you and with others, and to explore new structures and ways of learning and connecting and contributing out loud across this distance. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. -Eliza Dreier

What a lovely, transformative experience. While Ariana is precise not to call this a class, I do feel that it is a shimmering example of what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney call “study.” Harney: “I’ve been thinking more and more of study as something not where everybody dissolves into the student, but where people sort of take turns doing things for each other or for the others, and where you allow yourself to be possessed by others as they do something. That also is a kind of dispossession of what you might otherwise have been holding onto, and that possession is released in a certain way voluntarily, and then some other possession occurs by others.” This experience, of Rilking, reaffirmed a faith I had unknowingly let wane: that potentially anyone can teach you potentially anything, and that being and thinking with others—even, or especially, strangers—feels good like nothing else. Thank you, Ariana and everyone. -Lou Ellingson

I'm so grateful to you, Ariana, for creating an affordable space for artists like myself to study and read poetry together. I’m not always able to afford taking classes, let alone study in an institution. It’s really spaces like this, which you are so generously and lovingly providing that have been my bread and butter. I will be forever in your humble gratitude. If you’re a new poet without any “formal” training, studying in this way is invaluable. In this workshop (is that even an appropriate title?) Ariana gave us discussions and line readings of each poem. To me, this is once again the bread and butter in learning how to understand poetry - seeing it being taken apart line by line by an expert. Ariana is intuitive, generous, and kind with her time - qualities I never take for granted. -Rachel Galperin

This reading group was a spine for my days, a spell for getting through March. Through this act of sustained collective attention, Rilke, to whom I had always been unfortunately indifferent, began to take on a glow. Within that glow, crystalline forms, whose organizing patterns I internalized with the other members of the group, creating a resonance that has reverberated, will continue to reverberate, beyond the reading group. Though you took pains to remind us that it was not a class, RILKING had a thoughtful pedagogy. But it's true, it wasn't so much teaching as an act of spiritual ministration. It also inspired me personally to create a reading group of my own with the goal of having a similar ethos. I'll surely be back for Inanna. Thank you! -Zoe Tuck

Yay! Thank you!!! I just logged on and was feeling sad for no email but then it magically appeared. Really appreciate all your hard work (and Phoebe's too!) and how much you've given to all of us. Feeling so much love and joy in my heart for everyone in our little group and all the new ideas and things to think about... it's intense but also seriously the best. -Martha Emerson

I didn’t even know why and how I will be falling into this amazing RILKING Live journey over the last one week. But I enjoy the passion, the synergy, the bonding over that 2 hours really much, it’s my 9:30 - 11:30pm every night. Poetry reading is great, discussion is nothing but just great. I don’t have much to say. Just highly recommend anyone can watch those recording video to refresh your soul under such unpredictable chaos. -Patsy Shiu

What we’ve been doing really helped when I sat down to write. Thank you so much for what you’re doing. It’s unbelievably generous and is resonating so hard. -Mindy Cardozo

Grounding, healing and inspiring. Spending my mornings Rilking has brought so much meaning and structure in this precarious time. Reading with other people is an act of love. -Vanessa Aricco

Thank you so much for all that you do! This journey has bought such subtleness and a rich vibration to my life. Thank you thank you! Looking forward to today :-) And will send a proper testimonial after todays session. And cant wait to hear what is in store for next month! -Florence Devereux

Ariana Reines’s “Rilking” course was engaging and profound. Reines read and discussed the Duino Elegies in the light of her singular intellect and creative mind while providing the space for a plurality of perspectives. She let the ever-expanding implications of Rilke’s visionary work unfold rather than hemming it in with divisive institutionally approved theories, opening up new horizons of meaning in the poem while remaining refreshingly true to the “Theology of Rilke.” Reines’s “Rilking” was a transformative ritual of attention that I will never forget! -Nathan Mader

Even if, like me, you merely do your Rilking in the shadows and stay mute throughout,just to watch is so so rich an experience, Ariana speaks with such a fluency, her explanation is its own poetry she doesnt fall for the trap of simplification, or of a boiling down instead she builds upon and adds to Rilke's writing which dense itself now not only opens up, simply, but also gets widely expanded upon and its such a joy and a genuine thrill to bear witness to that, to experience the elation of living with a work of art so very intimately, a rare rare joy. -Jaap Schaaf

Dear Ariana, Phoebe, The micro version of this testimonial is that unexpectedly and with significant intimidation to be among writers native speakers with the ability to dissect my mother tongue in their mother tongue RILKING jolted joy and connection to the depths of both languages where I had been feeling stateless in either And beyond that - I loved finally finding the conference of (my) migratory birds: On the day of the new moon, / an orphaned March, of a year about to break into spring, / we deserted the bright skies / and the naked parks with their ideas of green / watching swarms of mosquitoes / eclose into what is not yet / an April sky / on a half-eaten Sunday / into the square / where chairs and tables are wearing / last winter's rain-covers / 1 and 0 we are a flock of starlings / hurtling into the blue edges / of fuzzy logic / As a Taurus, born on 22. April, I cannot wait to join the next adventure. -Wilhelmina Welsch

I wanted to let you know how incredibly helpful I have found our meetings to be. I had been thinking of myself in quite reductive terms and by extension I guess, other people too. In a forced isolation this has been tough. I didn't know that what I I needed was this. I have a sense that cycling through these elegies has forced me to quite meticulously flick through aspects of myself, aspects of us, like pages in a book, aspects I remember now but had not seen in a long time. I’m imagining the layers of that rose, slowly and meditatively peeling apart each one like a prayer bead to apprehend it more fully. I feel we are each one of those creatures peering out from brush and tree, maybe each a facet of that compound eye. I’ve been a silent lurker there in the garden, listening, learning. I wanted to let you know that I feel somehow ennobled by these readings, I also feel knocked right back onto my humility - all this, simultaneously, as it can only be. The group experience has been ennobling, we have spoken of collectivity and this experience has given me a real sense of what this can mean. -Jemma Cullen

Dear Ariana and Phoebe, Thank you so much for all your remarkable work. While I've only managed to be a later day west coast voyeur, these sessions have been a comfort and an inspiration. Rilking has been such a beautiful salve in this time of struggling focus, the intimacy and insights so profound. Thank you, thank you Ariana and all the remarkable participants. I look forward to further offerings! -Maegan Hill-Carroll

Most people are probably going to talk about the importance of the class during the COVID crisis: the relief of community it provided during our isolation, the comfort of a schedule during unstructured days, or the gift of reflection and clarity in a time of muddling fear. Ariana’s class provided all that, but it also gave me fresh insight into Rilka. By going line by line, I was drawn into the poems, relating to them in new ways and understanding them more profoundly. Ariana untangled the knottier lines by offering possible interpretations without oversimplifying. Her approach, to skirt between theoretical, metaphysical, and close reading (among others) worked well because it offered something for everyone—novice, dilatant, and disciple. Though I actively disliked and felt alienated by many elements of the elegies, Ariana’s attitude of openness and joy helped me approach the problematic aspects of Rilke’s work with compassion as well as critique. This course/community/discussion has been an absolute delight, and my life is richer for it. -Katie Brunero

I recently discovered Ariana’s excellent work through “A Sand Book,” & heard about Rilking via her Instagram. I was not familiar with Rilke, but I found Robert Bly’s translation of Selected Poems of RM Rilke on the bookshelf here at my friend’s place in NYC, and was intrigued. My friend is somewhat stuck on the west coast for now, so it’s just me & his two lovely kitties for now. Even before this isolation, I’ve been trying to get a little more structure in my daily routine; now it feels more urgent & important than ever before to take control of how you spend your time. Rilking quickly became a vital part of that routine. For the first few elegies, I was engrossed, following along closely & taking notes. However, I’ve also been doing morning exercises based on the “7-minute workout,” and after a few days I started to combine the two- listening to Ariana, while exercising. I also spent a few elegies on an inflatable couch, on Rockaway Beach, which was magical. I decided early on that these elegies would need to be read through several times to fully appreciate. And, I wasn’t always ready for academic analysis early in the morning! It felt good to hear them read aloud as a sort of  introduction, with the idea that I’ll absorb some of it now & come back for a deeper dive later. So, I quickly fell into a habit of exercising my body while Rilking warmed up my mind. (This was the main reason I stuck with IG Live, not Zoom!) It’s been an invigorating way to start the day, & the positive vibes flowing from the group have helped me face the world in the right frame of mind. Big thanks to Ariana, Phoebe & everyone who made this possible. I look forward to what comes next! -Aaron aka DethRok

I was part of Ariana’s Rilking during the coronavirus pandemic, and reading through the poems, waking early to join our online clan, sharing ideas, hearing all of these minds working through material together, was a soul saver for me. Ariana supports the group like the poet-mother many of us wish we’d had: navigating commentary away from too-rigid distinctions, toward nuance, toward keen observation. The workshop was an exercise in thinking like a ballet class exercises movement: in nimbleness, in allowing softness where it counts, and in getting the heart beating hard again for living well. -Ilana Simons

My days have felt rather matte since confinement. I’ve come to rely on pockets of light when I cross them — the sun coming out, the shadow of trees rustling on my bedroom wall. Ariana Reines’ Rilking sessions have replenished and sustained this light. To begin, there’s the work itself, The Duino Elegies, which have startled me on a deep and vital level. Reading one elegy each night before bed, and waking with them in the morning, has felt like a reverent act. Rilke himself could not ask for a better host — Ariana has been singularly generous with her time, her insights, and her ability to receive each of us. I have a sense she's invited us to dream Rilke with her; the whole experience has been a necessary and palliative wyrding (yet anchoring, somehow.) I haven’t felt this stimulated or enlivened in a long time. THANK YOU. -Eliza Robertson

I have taken the Rilking course for the past two weeks, following along at my own pace with the daily recordings. It has been an amazing way to read Rilke, as well as to feel connected to other humans and artists in this stressful time. I truly walk away from each session feeling fulfilled and revitalized!!! I also just want to give a quick thank you to both Ariana and Phoebe (not sure who runs this email haha). This course has given me great structure in otherwise unsettling times, and I felt like it was desperately needed!!!! I loved having the ability to watch later in the day and follow along with the courses through the recordings. -Christopher Michael

To use the lunation cycle to really get into a shared reading of Rilke was an amazing experience. Going to school in Sweden, I’m used to a different type of both learning and shared reading process, so my mind was overwhelmed by all the input it got by brilliant minds from all corners of the world. Such a precious gift. We took off in a newly built ship, but only a day or two in it was as if the form found itself and we could enjoy the heights and lows of the text and what it gave to us all. I genuinely feel like Rilking softly and lovingly planted a seed deep within me, and I’m thrilled to see it grow and whatever weird flowers it will birth, I know I will love them. -Sofia Pontén

I found an announcement for Rilking on instagram from a beautiful boy I met at a bar in bushwick, who was reeling from an unfortunate mix of unrequited love and a bad acid trip. My lover and i opened our hearts to him; this feeling will end, i promise i said to him, holding my lover's hand, knowing our time too, would end.The start of Rilking coincided with the Indian Prime Minister announcing a 21 day nationwide lockdown: as the lockdown was enforced, those of us who had homes felt trapped, watching a process of unprecedented brutality unfold. Everywhere you looked you heard stories of people dying, starving, walking miles to get home. And every evening I would log onto Zoom to let the faces of ever so many strangers and Ariana's warm, funny, angry and brilliant voice into my darkening study. The morning after we read the Third Elegy, I wrote in my diary: woke up calm, first time in days. Rilking brought me to life. It's effects stayed with me long into the next morning, the next weeks, slowing me down, illuminating me. It opened me to feeling "like a dog can feel an earthquake" - yes, these systems are collapsing, yes we feel rage and terror and grief. And yet: yes, there is the small joyous slowing down. Rilking, that magical gathering of birds, that it exists, and that it let me in, felt like one of the "miracles that came from bad times, which can sustain life for generations". Thank you. -Ria Singh Sawhney

This group felt like soul work of the collective (un)conscious. Ariana offers us a new notion of learning that is expansive as it in gentle- bringing us back to cycles of the moon, to our dreams, and to systems of curiosity and care. I grew in many directions. -Erin Howe

I spent my mornings in bed with this humble and generous conversation.  Who better to lead us through spiritual wilderness than than the poets (and who better to spend a morning in bed with)? More thanks than I can express... a balm for the heart… a quiet awakening. -Jen Berkowitz

Now that we're through the first round of RILKING with Ariana, I'm realizing that every one of our virtual gatherings managed to wrangle my attitude and offer a frame for the day, an outlook I could stand. With these poems, we’re in the deep interior and then we’re in the sensorial field of existence and then we’re zoomed-out on a cosmic scale. That sliding of layers and shifting of gears so accurately mirrors my experience of time right now. Participating in this adventure has helped me tolerate the pressure by reminding me what I’m here for. Still being led through it, now. -Rebecca Titus

It was such a pleasure to have this experience with you all. Everyone was so open and kind. I'm sad I missed the chance to read to such a receptive audience so I wanted to share a poem here. It is rather long but takes on something I've been thinking about with my Zen teacher and my sangha. In Zen, we study and make the vow to follow the path of the Bodhisattva, which includes two things. A vow to perceive reality and a vow to love all beings. This poem, still in its early stages, is trying to float along the perceived world and move from the place of fear to the extreme position of love for COVD, which has a name like an ancient angel or deity, seeing it as a living being, and bowing to the power this little organism has to dissolve everything humanity has built for itself. With so many wise and talented people on here, I'd love to take any thoughts or feedback you have. And I hope to see you all again soon. -Chris Carson

You all are making my heart swell—what a miracle to have shared this time with you. The bats and earth smells and sweating walls of these poems are going to fuel me well into the future. Thank you. Since I couldn't be with you in the moment, I made a recording of a poem I've written during our time together, which you'll see is woven through with many markings of the elegies. I'll paste the text of the poem in the comments. -Liz Bowen

Between soul and world Ariana hosts a refuge. This community is made of the most intelligent and beautiful human beings looking to each other in love and light and performing alchemical gold. my gratitude for every contribution and transformation felt in these most unforeseen times can only be expressed from the heart. where i was silent, i am now alive, where it was dark, i now find light, where i could not see beyond my own step, I now witness infinite horizons. -Jessica Dillon

In this time of isolation, when we are anchored in our homes but unmoored from all certainties, Ariana has led us into the interwebs of deep connection—with our ancestor poet, Rilke, and our global family of poets.  With Ariana we are untethered from the university, freed from the both the class and the room of the classroom. The hierarchy of professor and student is blasted into the precorona past; there are now only people making space, like Ariana, and people breathing into that space, the hundreds of us RILKING.  Ariana teaches text in the middle of our screens, and we text teaching down the side, and in all these boxes we find the circle of our creation. Thank you, Ariana for your reminder: poets have long mined solitude for intimacy. -Elena Sigman

I just wanted to briefly write and thank you both for organizing Rilking. It felt like an archway was tenderly cut into a new space that had always just been a membrane away. Thank you for being such a luminous guide Ariana!-sriwhana spong

Not a class, not a workshop, not a salon, not a performance, Rilking is more of a communal ritual. Ariana Reines acts as a warm and generous guide through Rilke's Duino elegies, but also more than that, she establishes entirely novel thresholds where we can meet each other and ourselves. I have experienced few technology-mediated events that simultaneously hold such power and intimacy. I am changed by this experience. -Erin Marie Sickler