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A literary epigram that pits style, publication, blood, Hemingway, and Poe against 'the American way.'

The page sounds half like tribute, half like accusation. By reducing style to publication and art to blood, it suggests that American literary culture turns vocation into branding while still feeding on violence and mortality.

Four-line American dictum: 'Style is publication, Mr. Hemmingway / And Art is blood, Mr. Poe'.

The poem addresses two canonical Americans as rivals in a single sentence and assigns them their respective charges. Hemingway gets style as publication — a dig at the craft-as-career reading — and Poe gets art as blood, which is the dig's counterweight. 'So goes on the American way' is the poem's shrug; the verdict is the culture, not the speaker.