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.