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pp. 368, “Who but a poet could bring such vitality of imaginative insight to history that a night passed nearly 200 years ago could come back to vivid life? But more than re-creating one extraordinary gathering, Stanley Plumly knows what makes an evening truly immortal: located within those few hours that pass among extraordinary souls in heated conversation lurks the singular imprint of each man’s history and the yet unseen map of time unspooling its fortunes ahead of each. Plumly offers us some outline of fate’s thumbprint as it secretly presses itself down onto four lives, giving us that knowledge these men can sense but not yet see themselves. In doing so, he gives his readers the great gift of showing not only the intermingled yarn of unique lives as they weave together and pull apart?of one evening as it reaches forward and backward into art’s eternity?but also a privileged glimpse into the inner life of the artist and the ongoing struggle of faith, ambition, devotion, vision that undergird not only the greatest works of art but also those that (so humanly) fall short of their lofty mark.”