These manuscripts are examples of what Merrill said was the "patchwork" that saw the poems "all stitched together."
In "An Interview with Donald Sheenan," Merrill said: "I never dreamed, when 'The Thousand and Second Night' began to take shape, that it would be as long as it is. I couldn't forsee the structure of the poem. I was working on what seemed rather unrelated poems, then suddenly an afternoon of patchwork saw them all stitched together. What emerged as the final section had been written quite early in the process." (Collected Prose, ed. J. D. McClatchy & Stephen Yenser, NY: Knopf, 2004: 54.)