a mountebank, and
Twain thought Poe
a charlatan.
They disagreed
on what they meant,
and settled on a synonym.
Twain kept his peace
in public over Poe. We
only know he thought him
almost as unreadable as Austen
from a private letter's evidence.
Poe's vitriol against Mark
Twain is speculative at best,
And how he came by it
would be hard to explain
or test. For when Poe died,
Sam Clemens was fourteen
at most, and not Mark Twain
at all, although
the early warning
signs were all no doubt
in place. Still, reading between
lines, it isn't hard to guess Poe's gall.
These two were destined to cohabitate
in unique spiritual pigeonhole
reserved for brilliant, querulous
malcontents - and neither man
liked sharing space
at all.
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