The Cantos

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The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long poem in 109 sections plus a number of drafts and fragments added as a supplement at the request of the poem's American publisher, James Laughlin. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the material in the first three cantos was abandoned or redistributed in 1923, when Pound prepared the first instalment of the poem, A Draft of XVI Cantos (Three Mountains Press, 1925). It is a book-length work, widely considered to present formidable difficulties to the reader. Strong claims have been made for it as the most significant work of modernist poetry of the twentieth century. As in Pound's prose writing, the themes of economics, governance and culture are integral to its content.

The most striking feature of the text, to a casual browser, is the inclusion of Chinese characters as well as quotations in European languages other than English. Recourse to scholarly commentaries is almost inevitable for a close reader. The range of allusion to historical events is very broad, and abrupt changes occur with little transition. There is also wide geographical reference; Pound added to his earlier interests in the classical Mediterranean culture and East Asia selective topics from medieval and early modern Italy and Provence, the beginnings of the United States, England of the seventeenth century, and details from Africa he had obtained from Leo Frobenius.