An epic of great vision and complexity, Pound's Cantos addresses the profound human issues in history and in our time. Each of the nine groupings of poems can be seen as a fresh wave that swells out from and falls back upon the earlier cantos, extending them structurally, adding new layers of meaning. A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930), which introduces the work, thus anticipates the full Cantos' essential themes and provides the surest entry into Pound's encyclopedic masterpiece.