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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.

Five-line dictum: 'Style is publication / Mr. Hemmingway / And Art is blood / Mr. Poe', then 'So goes on the American way...'

The poem makes two American masters carry opposed charges in one breath. Hemingway is handed 'Style is publication', reducing craft to a career and a printed product; Poe is handed 'Art is blood', the costlier, bodily counterweight. The direct address - 'Mr. Hemmingway', 'Mr. Poe' - keeps it half-tribute, half-accusation, as if reading them their verdicts to their faces. 'So goes on the American way...' is the trailing shrug that pins the indictment on the culture rather than either man, the ellipsis letting the pattern continue past the page. The source spelling 'Hemmingway' is kept as written. This reading remains provisional because the page is marked mixed quality band and OCR-uncertain.