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This erasure poem succinctly expresses the intentions within the “Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln. Although the poem has incorrect grammar usage, making the reading experience “clunkier,” it simultaneously makes the message to be grasped instantaneous with a “get-right-to-the point” demeanor. The first stanza expresses the people who came before us, “our fathers,” who cemented the main ideal of the American nation that “men are created equal.” However, the second stanza follows up with a possibility of the future of our nation with the words: “nation might live.” This makes the ideas in this stanza serve as an antithesis to the foundation set in the beginning of all men being created equal, since the notion of “civil war” and a “great battle-field” compromises this very ideal, and raises the possibility of our nation’s demise. The phrase “nation might live” implies the possibility that the nation might not live, thus ruining the work done by “our fathers” who came before us. The third and final stanza closes the poem with the present-time. Keeping the anaphoric tricolon and making it the start of the stanza gives it more of a punch, emphasizing the idea that the people of the present cannot set new guidelines for our nation to follow, for the most that we can do is uphold the values set by the nation’s predecessors. The nation, and perhaps to a greater extent, even “the world” is for the living to control and make use of, so we should promote a “new birth of freedom,” one that is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” This freedom should be for us to enjoy, and for us to maintain.
This poem clarifies the original message delivered during the Civil War to be applicable in a more general context, the American context. The straight and broad strokes of black marker used to eliminate the text present has a resemblance to the stripes of the American flag, a symbol of American ideals and virtues, making the poem as a whole a message highlighting the American morals Abraham Lincoln desired for his fellow people to understand and resonate with.