An American Prayer: The Poem

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

A series of pages from Jim's notebooks that together form a version of An American Prayer.
Also several typed sheets for a recording of the poem

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The recorded version from the American Prayer LP

[zaval80]

The above is not from notebooks, otherwise they'd denote the exact notebook. It's from some manuscript as they say. The printed pages were prepared for the birthday poetry session, and more of these can be accumulated.

What's interesting, in the middle of the manuscript is some design for what seems to be "Far Arden", which was the first half of the first poetry session. Probably most of these names can be referred to certain poems.

Nobody has an idea when this complete manuscript of AAP was prepared, so I wonder if the presence of "Far Arden" is of any clue. At least the first chapter, published in "Rolling Stone", is something from the first half of 1969, basically from the same period as "Far Arden". At first, Morrison had an idea of "american prayers", probably poems for his "American Night" cycle, but somehow an idea of a work named "American Night" was put to the back and AAP received priority.